scourging

Pluralscourgings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of scourge.

   Malaria was scourging the region long before the first clinics opened.

   The guards were accused of scourging prisoners who refused to work.

   Note

   The figurative use leads: a disease, a famine or a war is the subject and a whole region the object, as in malaria was scourging the region. In Scottish dialect the word also has a farming meaning, a crop or a farmer scourging the land by wearing out its fertility. A single act of whipping has a noun of its own.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A beating with a scourge or similar whip; a flogging.

   Under the old law, theft from a temple was punished by public scourging.

   The painting shows the scourging of a captive tied to a stone pillar.

   Similarflogging, whipping, lashing, beating

   Note

   At home in histories of law and religion, where it names a penalty: Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla's Zoroastrian Civilization (1922) gives scourging with stripes as the punishment for breaking various contracts. For the punishment in general it goes without an article (punished by public scourging); for particular beatings it takes the or a plural, as in the scourging of a captive or repeated scourgings.

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