lace into

lace into idiom
Also, light into. Attack, assail, as in He laced into me for arriving late, or She lit into him for forgetting the tickets. The first of these colloquial terms employs lace in the sense of “beat up or thrash,” a usage dating from the late 1500s. The idiom with light dates from the late 1800s and stems from the verb meaning “descend.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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