scourge
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: agriculture
business
engineering
government
lifestyle
military
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
tools
war
weaponry
Etymology: From Middle English scourge (“a lash, whip, scourge; affliction, calamity; person who causes affliction or calamity; shoot of a vine”), and then either:
* from Anglo-Norman scorge, escorge, escurge, or Old French scurge, escourge, escorge, escorgiee, escurge (modern French escourgée (“(archaic) whip made of leather strips”)), either:
** from Vulgar Latin *excoriāta (“strip of hide; a scourge”), from Late Latin excoriāre, the present active infinitive of excoriō (“to strip the skin from, to skin”), from Latin ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’) + corium (“skin; hide, leather”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off, sever; to divide, separate”)); or
** from Latin ex- (intensifying prefix) + corrigia (“a whip”) (from corrigō (“to make right, correct; to reform”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to righten; to straighten”)); or
* from Middle English scourgen (verb) (see etymology 2).
Cognates
Italian scuriada, scuriata
Inflected forms:
form: scourges
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: scourges
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: scourging
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: past
form: no-table-tags
pos: verb
tags: table-tags
form: glossary
pos: verb
tags: inflection-template
form: scourge
pos: verb
tags: infinitive
form: scourge
pos: verb
tags: first-person
present
singular
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: first-person
past
singular
form: scourge
pos: verb
tags: present
second-person
singular
form: scourgest
pos: verb
tags: archaic
present
second-person
singular
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: past
second-person
singular
form: scourgedst
pos: verb
tags: archaic
past
second-person
singular
form: scourges
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: scourgeth
pos: verb
tags: archaic
present
singular
third-person
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: past
singular
third-person
form: scourge
pos: verb
tags: plural
present
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: past
plural
form: scourge
pos: verb
tags: present
subjunctive
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: past
subjunctive
form: scourge
pos: verb
tags: imperative
present
form: -
pos: verb
tags: imperative
past
form: scourging
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: scourged
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
Senses:
gloss: A whip, often made of leather and having multiple tails; a lash.
pos: noun
tags: historical
examples: He flogged him with a scourge.
Yf they breake myne ordinaunces, and kepe not my commaundementes. I vil vyſet their offences with the rodde, and their ſynnes with ſcourges.
My father layd vpon you a heauie yoke, vvhich I vvil make heauier: my father bette you vvith ſcourges, but I vvil beate you vvith ſcorpions.
Up to coach then goes / Th' observed Maid, takes both the scourge and reins, / And to her side her handmaid straight attains.
[H]eaven-born truth, / And moderation fair, vvere the red marks / Of ſuperſtition's ſcourge: […]
Mortify / Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns; / Smite, shrink not, spare not.
Another strange manifestation of collective mental abnormality, though not directly connected with sorcery, was the Brotherhood of Flagellants. […] These men lashed themselves and each other unmercifully with knotted leather scourges until the blood ran, two or three times daily.
gloss: A person or thing regarded as an agent of divine punishment.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: And therfore the faithfull had neede of inuincible conſtancie and incredible pacience, that they may know them to be gods squorges, and the inſtrumentes of his wrath, […]
Againe not long after this euen ſhortly after the death of Alaricus came that Flagellum Dei that ſcourge of God into Italy, Attila King of the Hunnes, and ſpoyled the country vvith maruailous hoſtility in the time of the Emperour Martian.
[I]f Attila equalled the hoſtile ravages of Tamerlane, either the Tartar or the Hun might deſerve the epithet of the Scourge of God.
[H]e, / As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, / Mocking our poverty, and telling us / Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons.
Yet true destructive power is power just the same as constructive. Even Attila, the Scourge of God, who helped to scourge the Roman world out of existence, was great with power. He was the scourge of God; not the scourge of the League of Nations, hired and paid in cash.
gloss: A source of persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble, such as a cruel ruler, disease, pestilence, or war.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: Graffiti is the scourge of building owners everywhere.
Thou ominous and fearefull Ovvle of death, / Our Nations terror, and their bloody ſcourge, / The period of thy Tyranny approacheth, / On vs thou canſt not enter but by death: […]
[W]hat ſcourge for periury, / Can this darke monarchy afford falſe Clarence, […]
Intemperance is the plague of ſenſualitie; and temperance is not her ſcourge, but rather her ſeaſoning.
You haue bin a ſcourge to her enemies, you haue bin a Rod to her Friends, you haue not indeede loued the Common people.
Cimon […] vvhoſe genius, riſing ſtrong, / Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad / The ſcourge of Perſian pride, at home the friend / Of every vvorth and every ſplendid art; […]
On you it rests, whether I quit for ever the neighbourhood of man, and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow-creatures, and the author of your own speedy ruin.
[…] I speak it not / As loving parliaments, which, as they have been / In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings / The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.
[H]e had become a monster of cruelty, having in him the same temper as of old made the tyrants of Padova and Verona and Brescia the scourges of their generation.
America's poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty's scourge is fiercest below $1.25[…]: people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.
gloss: To strike (a person, an animal, etc.) with a scourge (noun etymology 1 sense 1) or whip; to flog, to whip.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Hvng be yͤ heauens vvith black, yield day to night; / Comets importing change of Times and States, / Brandiſh your cryſtall Treſſes in the Skie, / And vvith them ſcourge the bad reuolting Stars, / That haue conſented vnto Henries Death: / King Henry the Fift, too famous to liue long, / England ne're loſt a King of ſo much vvorth.
Doe vve not vpon every good-friday, in ſundrie places, ſee a great number of men and vvomen, ſcourge and beate themſelves ſo long till they bruſe and teare their fleſh, even to the bones? I have often ſeene it my ſelfe, and that vvithout enchantment.
[…] I cauſed him to be brought to the Geers, vvith a Halter about his Neck, and be ſoundly vvhipp'd; and indeed our People did ſcourge him ſeverely from Head to Foot; […]
For the waves never menace heaven until / Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny
If they vote, they do not send men to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, while—I might here insert all that slavery implies and is,—it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.
"Nay, nay, let him pass," said the young Chian, Antagoras; "he will get scourged if he is too late. Perhaps, like the Persians, Pausanias wears false hair, and wishes the slave to dress it in honour of us."
The more thou scourgest me, the deeper thou scourgest my religion into me; there is One Whose Love assuages the pain.
gloss: To drive, or force (a person, an animal, etc.) to move, with or as if with a scourge or whip.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: So judge thou ſtill, preſumptuous, till the wrauth, / Which thou incurr'ſt by flying, meet thy flight / Seavenfold, and ſcourge that wiſdom back to Hell, / Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain / Can equal anger infinite provok't.
Thou knowest not, and mayst thou never know, / How bitter is the tear that firy shame / Scourges and tortures from the soldier's eye.
gloss: To punish (a person, an animal, etc.); to chastise.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: For a Patient and Thankful Heart in Sickness. Whom thou lovest, O Lord, him dost thou chasten, yea, every son that thou receivest, thou scourgest, and in so doing thou offerest thyself unto him, as a father unto his son. For what son is whom the father chasteneth not?
He cals vs rebels, traitors, and vvill ſcourge / VVith haughtie armes this hatefull name in vs.
You ſhall with rods of iron ſcourge theſe treaſons.
[T]he purgatory is before the indulgence, the correction is before mercy. He scourgeth every son whom he receiveth; first he scourges him, and then he receives him; […] as long as his love lasts, he corrects us, and as long as he corrects us, he loves us.
Look at thy followers and clients: are they not cutting the throats of humble men by way of vengeance for the crime of a great one? But that is the way one patrician always scourges the insolence of another.
Upon how grievous iniquities consumed I myself, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity, that having forsaken Thee, it might bring me to the treacherous abyss, and the beguiling service of devils, to whom I sacrific ed my evil actions, and in all these things thou didst scourge me! I dared even, while Thy solemnities were celebrated within the walls of Thy Church, to desire, and to compass a business, deserving death for its fruits, for which Thou scourgedst me with grievous punishments, […]
God has got me in his power at last, and is going to scourge me for my bad doings—that's what is seems like.
Once thou verily hearkened unto my prayer aforetime, / Honoring me, and severely scourgedst the host of the Grecians!
gloss: To cause (someone or something) persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble; to afflict, to torment.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: And that the Remonſtrant cannot vvaſh his hands of all the cruelties exercis'd by the Prelats, is paſt doubting. They ſcourg'd the Confeſſors of the Goſpel, and he held the Scourgers garments.
Thou hast, thyself, broken all laws, dissolved every tie; thou bruisest, scourgest, robbest this thy noble kingdom of England, and shall we not have at least the poor liberty to rail.
gloss: Of a crop or a farmer: to deplete the fertility of (land or soil).
pos: verb
tags: Scotland
figuratively
transitive
Derived words: scourged
scourger
scourging
scourgingly
Translations: