[a. L. ferula giant fennel, a rod.]
1. Bot. A genus of plants; the giant fennel.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. lxxi. (1495), 645. Ferula is an herbe.
1562. Turner, Herbal, II. 1 b. The nature of Ferula is the sorest enemie that can be to Lampreys.
1693. Sir T. P. Blount, Nat. Hist., 465. Vossius in his Notes on Pomponius Mela, affirms them to be Arborescent Ferula’s.
1811. A. T. Thomson, Lond. Disp. (1818), 175. This species of ferula is a native of the south of Persia, chielfly growing on the mountains in the provinces of Chorasaan and Laar, where it is named hingisch.
1868. Mrs. H. L. Evans, Wint. in Algeria, 25. The beautiful feathery leaf of the ferula.
2. From the use of the fennel-stalk in Roman times: A cane, rod, or other instrument of punishment, esp. a flat piece of wood (see FERULE 2 quot. 1825); fig. school discipline.
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 612. Many … do put forth their hands to be stricken … with the ferula.
1612. Brinsley, Lud. Lit., xix. (1627), 215. I haue laboured and striuen by Ferula, and all meanes of seuerity, yet I haue not beene able to make my Schollars to vtter their mindes in any tollerable manner, of ordinary things, but in very barbarous phrase, nor so much as to put it in practice amongst themselues.
1712. E. Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, 123. We … had Ferula’s made to punish Swearing.
1840. Peter Parley’s Annual, 316. They had never known the infliction of chastisement from either cane or ferula.
1851. Carlyle, Sterling, I. iv. (1872), 27. In this his ever-changing course, from Reece at Cowbridge to Trollope in Christ’s, which was passed so nomadically, under ferulas of various colour, the boy had, on the whole, snatched successfully a fair share of what was going.
3. Surg. A long splint.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. 444. Ferula, Chips or Splents made to tye about broken bones when set again in their places.
1884. in Syd. Soc. Lex.
