scourge

Pluralscourges

Formsscourges, scourging, scourged

1. 1
   source of miserynounfigurativelycountable

   A cause of lasting and often widespread pain, suffering or trouble, such as a cruel ruler, a disease, a plague or a war.

   Robocalls have become a modern scourge, and regulators are struggling to stop them.

   For centuries smallpox and famine were the twin scourges of the countryside.

   Similarbane, plague, curse, blight, menace

   Oppositeblessing, boon

   Note

   Where the agent of divine punishment is sent for a reason, this kind of scourge simply goes on hurting: a disease, a war, a tyrant, or something as small as graffiti. The usual frame is the scourge of followed by those who suffer, as in the scourge of building owners everywhere; a possessive does the same work, as in their bloody scourge in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 1.

2. 2
   cause miseryverbfigurativelytransitive

   To afflict or torment someone or something with lasting, often widespread suffering or trouble.

   Gang violence continues to scourge neighborhoods that the city has long neglected.

   Drought scourged the region for most of a decade, emptying farms and towns alike.

   Similarplague, afflict, ravage, torment

3. 3
   whipnounhistoricalcountable

   A whip or lash, often made of leather and having several tails.

   The guard lifted a scourge of knotted leather cords.

   Mortify / Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns; / Smite, shrink not, spare not.

   1833, Alfred Tennyson, “St. Simeon Stylites”

   Similarwhip, lash

   Note

   The literal whip belongs mostly to history now, and much of its life was spent in Scripture: Myles Coverdale's Bible of 1535 sets scourges beside the rod as punishment for sin, and The Holie Bible of 1609 threatens to go from scourges to scorpions. It was not only for punishment, though. In George Chapman's Homer a young woman takes both the scourge and the reins of her coach.

4. 4
   beat with whipverbtransitive

   To beat a person or animal with a scourge or other whip.

   In some medieval processions, penitents would scourge themselves until they bled.

   The prisoner was scourged in the courtyard and then thrown into a cell.

   Similarwhip, flog, lash, thrash, flagellate

   Note

   Penance is one of its oldest settings: John Florio's translation of Montaigne (1603) tells of men and women who scourge themselves every Good Friday until their flesh is torn. Poets turn the verb on nature as well, and Shelley pictures waves that never menace heaven until they are scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny.

5. 5
   God's punishmentnounfigurativelycountable

   Someone or something viewed as sent by God to inflict punishment.

   Chroniclers called the invading warlord the scourge of God, sent to punish a sinful people.

   The preacher declared the plague a scourge for the town's wickedness.

   Similarpunishment

   Note

   The best-known use is a title: the Scourge of God, Latin Flagellum Dei, given to Attila, King of the Huns, as Thomas Coryat recalls in 1611. Edward Gibbon allowed in 1781 that Tamerlane might deserve the epithet as well. The phrase casts a conqueror as a whip in God's hand: terrible, but sent for a purpose.

6. 6
   punishverbfigurativelytransitive

   To punish or chastise a person or animal.

   The prophets warned that heaven would scourge the nation for its sins.

   The editorial scourged city officials for ignoring repeated safety warnings.

   Similarpunish, chastise, castigate, lambaste

   Note

   Much of its history runs through one verse about divine discipline: whom the Lord loves he chastens, and every son he receives he scourges. John Donne preached on that line in 1626, "first he scourges him, and then he receives him", so in this sense the verb can carry correction meant for the sufferer's good, not cruelty alone.

7. 7
   drive forwardverbtransitive

   To drive or force a person or animal to move, with a whip or as if with one.

   Bitter winds scourge the sheep down from the high pasture every fall.

   Hunger scourged the refugees onward through the mountain passes.

   Similardrive, whip, lash

   Note

   The driving sense usually comes with a word of direction, such as back, onward or from: Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) threatens a wrath that will scourge that wisdom back to Hell. Often the whip is only a figure and the driver is hunger, wind or shame, as in Walter Savage Landor's Count Julian (1812), where shame scourges tears from a soldier's eye.

8. 8
   wear out soilverbdialectalfigurativelyScotlandtransitive

   Of a crop or farmer, to impoverish land or soil by stripping it of its fertility.

   A greedy tenant might scourge the land in the last years of his lease.

   Flax scourged the soil so badly that the field lay in grass for years afterwards.

   Similarexhaust, deplete, impoverish

   Oppositeenrich

   Note

   Scottish farming speech uses it for wearing out a field. Its subject can be the crop that draws the goodness out of the ground or the farmer who grows it, and its object is the land or soil, not the crop. The picture is the verb of lasting affliction applied to a field, worn down season after season.

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