RIOT ACT • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Riot act

... time on, he hated me, always laid for a chance to sting me. We went to Princeton the same year. We collided there, so hard that when word of it got to my father's ears, he called me home and read the riot act so strong that I flared up and left. Then I came to the coast here and got a job in the woods, got to be a logging boss, and went into business on my own hook eventually. I'd just got nicely started when I ran into Monohan again. He'd got into timber himself. I ...

— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair