[f. WHIP sb. 1 + LASH sb.1 2.]
1. The lash of a whip. Also allusively and fig.
1573–80. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 36. Whiplash wel knotted, and cartrope ynough.
1774. Pennsylv. Gaz., 9 Feb. Suppl. 2/3. Silk whip-lashes.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xxxii. He let out his whip-lash and touched up a little boy on the calves of his legs.
1891. Kipling, Light that Failed, iv. ‘He wants the whip-lash.’ ‘Lay it on with science, then.’
1894. Athenæum, 11 Aug., 195/2. Nothing escapes the whip-lash of the ‘college wit.’
1915. M. Baillie, Saunders Captain the Curé, v. Listening to the sharp whip-lash of furious voices in the room below.
2. transf. An object resembling the lash of a whip, as the vibraculum of certain polyzoans; spec. a species of seaweed with long narrow fronds.
1850. Miss Pratt, Comm. Things of Sea-side, ii. 124. The two species of Sea Whiplash,… One kind of this whiplash (Chorda filum) grows attached to rocks and stones.
1857. Gosse, Omphalos, 146. The long and tough whip-lash in which the point of each leaf terminates. Ibid. (1865), Land & Sea, 225. In the Scuparia … there are some special organs of defence…. One of these is called the vibraculum, or the whiplash.
