scourge
Plural: scourges
Noun
- a whip used to inflict punishment (often used for pedantic humor)
- something causing misery or death
- a person who inspires fear or dread
- A whip, often made of leather and having multiple tails; a lash.
- A person or thing regarded as an agent of divine punishment.
- A source of persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble, such as a cruel ruler, disease, pestilence, or war.
Verb
Verb Forms: scourged, scourging, scourges
- To punish severely; to inflict great suffering upon.
- punish severely; excoriate
- whip
- cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly
- To strike (a person, an animal, etc.) with a scourge (noun sense 1) or whip; to flog, to whip.
- To drive, or force (a person, an animal, etc.) to move, with or as if with a scourge or whip.
- To punish (a person, an animal, etc.); to chastise.
- To cause (someone or something) persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble; to afflict, to torment.
- Of a crop or a farmer: to deplete the fertility of (land or soil).
Examples
- Graffiti is the scourge of building owners everywhere.
- He flogged him with a scourge.
- His opponent’s cunning strategy would SCOURGE him with a flurry of bingos.
Origin / 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
Synonyms
bane, curse, desolate, devastate, flagellate, flagellum, lay waste to, nemesis, ravage, terror, threat, waste, belt, birch, cut, feague, flog, knout, lash, lather, quirt, scourge, scutch, slash, strap, stripe, thrash, thresh, whip, whoop, yark
Scrabble Score: 10
scourge: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordscourge: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
scourge: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary