Scold, upbraid, rate, berate, tongue-lash, jaw, bawl, chew out, wig, rail, revile, vituperate can all mean to reprove, reproach, or censure angrily, harshly, and more or less abusively.
Scold, the term most common in ordinary use, usually implies a rebuking in a mood of irritation or ill temper, with or without sufficient justification.
Upbraid stresses reproaching or censuring on more definite grounds than scold does and usually suggests justification or justifiable anger.
Rate and the more common berate usually imply more or less prolonged, angry, and sometimes abusive scolding either in censuring or in reprimanding.
Fairly close synonyms of rate and berate are the expressive tongue-lash which stresses the punitive effect on the person berated and the crude terms jaw, bawl, usually with out, chew out, and wig (chiefly British), which emphasize the noisy prolonged ranting which usually attends a berating.
Rail carries a more definite implication of either abusive or scoffing language than rate or berate .
Revile carries a much stronger implication of abusive, scurrilous language than rail does but little, if any, suggestion of scoffing; it often also implies deliberate vilification.
Vituperate implies more violence in the censure and in the method of attack than does revile, but otherwise they are close synonyms.