[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To strike, cut, or kill with a tomahawk.
1755. Gentl. Mag., XXV. 579/2. Mac Swine was ordered by the Indian to make a fire, and upon his not doing it so readily or so nimbly as was expected, he was threatened to be tomohawk’d.
1769. Middlesex Jrnl., 14–6 Sept., 1/4. By six Indians, the man and woman were tomahawked and scalped.
1791. J. Long, Voy. Ind. Interpr., 96. The instant the animal drops they tomahawk it.
1829. Southey, O. Newman, IV. 45. Stragglers tomahawk’d And scalp’d, or dragg’d away that they may die By piecemeal murder.
1889. H. H. Romilly, Verandah in N. Guinea, 74. They … were treacherously tomahawked.
b. fig. To attack savagely or mercilessly in speech or (more usually) in writing; to ‘cut up’ or demolish in a review or criticism.
1815. ‘Agrestis,’ Feudal Hall, xlv. [She] tomahawks me with sharp words.
1820. Blackw. Mag., VII. 388. He afterwards goes out of his way to tomahawk Dryden, for an allusion to Abraham in a dedication.
1895. Daily News, 19 June, 6/2. Her second daughter, Lady Charlotte,… wrote the book which Thackeray tomahawked.
2. To cut (a sheep) in shearing it. Australia.
1859. H. Kingsley, G. Hamlyn, xx. Shearers were very scarce, and the poor sheep got fearfully ‘tomahawked’ by the new hands.
1872. Eden, My Wife & I in Queensland, iv. 96. Some men never get the better of this habit, but ‘tomahawk’ as badly after years of practice as when they first began.
1896. Paterson, Man fr. Snowy River, 162. The novice who … had tommyhawked half a score.
Hence Tomahawking vbl. sb. and ppl. a.; also Tomahawker, one who tomahawks (lit. and fig.).
1819. Metropolis, III. 69. The tomahawkers of the Edinburgh Review.
1833. Boston, etc. Herald, 9 April, 2/1. We have not a tomahawking article in the whole number.
1839–40. W. Irving, Wolfert’s R., i. (1855), 2. They recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and scalping.
1862. Times, 8 April, 11/4. A large body of scalping and tomahawking Indians.
1886. Pall Mall G., 2 Oct., 6/1. My father,… noticing that the sheep were particularly badly shorn, remarked to the manager that ‘it was mere tomahawking.’
1886. Manch. Exam., 3 Nov., 3/1. A return to a style of literary tomahawking which we had hoped was for ever extinct.
1897. Athenæum, 20 March, 372. Lest he should find himself tomahawked instead of being the tomahawker.
