Also 5 flayle, 7 fleyle. [f. prec. sb. In early examples of sense 1 perh. ad. OF. flaeler:—L. flagellāre to FLAGELLATE.]

1

  1.  trans. To scourge, whip; to beat or thrash. Also to flail along, to drive by beating.

2

14[?].  Songs & Carols (Percy. Soc.), lx. 72.

        They hym naylyd and yl flaylyd,
  Alas, that innocent!
Lunges, blynd knyght, with al hys myght,
  With a spere hys hart rent.

3

1839.  K. H. Digby, Mores Catholici, IX. xi. 373. He flails me, and makes all my body burn with his fire, alas!

4

1873.  Holland, Arthur Bonnicastle, v. 85. That’s the way my mother always flailed me.

5

1888.  Boldrewood, Robbery under Arms, i. (1890), 7. We soon got sharp enough to flail him [a pony] along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the milkers, I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them.

6

  2.  To strike with or as with a flail.

7

1583.  Stanyhurst, Æneis, etc. (Arb.), 138.

        And in od corner, for Mars they [the Cyclopes] be sternfulye flayling
Hudge spoaks and chariots, by the which thee surlye God, angerd.

8

1622.  H. Sydenham, Serm. Sol. Occ., II. 97. If we can fleyle down the transgressions of the time.

9

1878.  Stevenson, Inland Voy., 165. The misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time, made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman.

10

1878.  Cumberld. Gloss., Flail, to hit; to beat with a down stroke.

11

1883.  Blackie, Ancrum Moor, in Blackw. Mag., Nov., 639.

        With giant stroke she flails about,
  And heaps a score of dead,
That bring—oh woe! a vengeful troop
  Upon her single head.

12

  3.  To thresh (corn) with a flail.

13

1821.  William Read, Rouge et Noir, 24.

        Yet, being now my purpose to turn poet,
As those whom craft, or handicraft, is failing
Are apt to do, (for instance Clod, you know it,
Pens verses on the sheaves he should be flailing).

14

  fig.  1857.  Whittier, What of the Day? 28.

          See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends,
And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor,
  Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless grain!

15