A talking-to is when someone tells you off — speaks to you angrily or seriously because you did something wrong. It is almost always used with the verb 'give': 'give someone a talking-to', or sometimes 'get a talking-to'. The person doing it is usually above the other person in some way: a parent to a child, a teacher to a student, a boss to a worker, a coach to a player. You would not normally say your friend gave you a talking-to, unless you were joking. Notice that it is a noun, even though it is made of two little verb-ish words, so it takes 'a': a talking-to, two talking-tos. The feeling of the word is important. It sounds slightly light, slightly warm — a talking-to is serious words, but it is not a punishment, and it usually ends there. A parent who gives a child a stern talking-to is not hitting the child or taking anything away; they are just saying, at length and with a hard face, that this must not happen again. Because of that soft edge, people often use it half-jokingly, even about themselves: 'I gave myself a good talking-to and got back to work.' Words that live near it: 'a telling-off' (British, very close in meaning), 'a lecture' (longer and more boring), 'a scolding' (a bit more old-fashioned and more formal in writing).