1. The skin of a cow (when stripped off); the same dressed as a mat, a covering for trunks, or the like. Also attrib.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, i. With a very small and weather-beaten old cow’s-skin trunk.
2. Leather made of the skin of the cow or ox.
3. A whip of raw hide; = COW-HIDE 3.
1822. W. Cobbett, Rur. Rides (1885), I. 87. He belaboured him with the ‘cowskin.’
1864. W. W. Whitby, American Slavery, 187. In the eloquent language of Douglas,… ‘The man who wields the blood-clotted cow-skin during the week, fills the pulpit on the Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.’
Hence Cow-skin v., to flog with a cow-skin.
a. 1849. Poe, W. E. Channing, Wks. 1864, III. 239. Napoleon Buonaparte Jones … is cowskinned with perfect regularity five times a month.
