Scourge

Quick meaning: Scourge is a noun meaning (weaponry, chiefly historical) A whip, often made of leather and having multiple tails; a lash.

Meaning

(weaponry, chiefly historical) A whip, often made of leather and having multiple tails; a lash.

More Meanings

1. A person or thing regarded as an agent of divine punishment.
2. A source of persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble, such as a cruel ruler, disease, pestilence, or war.
3. To strike (a person, an animal, etc.) with a scourge (noun etymology 1 sense 1) or whip; to flog, to whip.
4. To drive, or force (a person, an animal, etc.) to move, with or as if with a scourge or whip.
5. To punish (a person, an animal, etc.); to chastise.
6. To cause (someone or something) persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble; to afflict, to torment.
7. Of a crop or a farmer: to deplete the fertility of (land or soil).

Example Sentences

He flogged him with a scourge.

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

[H]eaven-born truth, / And moderation fair, vvere the red marks / Of ſuperſtition's ſcourge: […]

Up to coach then goes / Th' observed Maid, takes both the scourge and reins, / And to her side her handmaid straight attains.

Word Forms

• scourges
• scourging
• scourged
• scourgest
• scourgedst
• scourgeth

Synonyms for scourge

Depending on context, synonyms include belt, birch, cut, feague, flagellate, flog.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include bane, terror, threat, curse, nemesis, flagellate.

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