Also 6 ferrall 6–7 ferul(l. [ad. L. ferul-a: see FERULA.]
1. = FERULA 1. Also a plant or stalk of it.
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., I. 1049. Take ferules eke or saly twigges take.
1589. Fleming, Virg. Bucol., X. 30. Syluanus … came … Shaking his flouring feruls.
1620. Brinsley, Virg. Eclog., 95, note. The ferule is a kind of shrub or big herbe like vnto fennel giant, with the branches wherof schoole-maisters vsed to [hurt?] children on the hands.
2. = FERULA 2.
1599. Bp. Hall, Sat. IV. i. 169. My rimes relish of the ferule still.
1636. B. Jonson, Discov. (1641), 115. From the rodde, or ferule, I would have them free.
a. 1656. Bp. Hall, Rem., Wks. (1660), 304. If he did let fall any such Speech before he had any Down upon his Chin, and whilst he was under the Ferule, what Candour is it to produce it now, to the contradiction of his better Experience, and ripest Judgment?
1825. Lamb, in Hone, Every-day Bk., I. 967. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,—but nothing like so sweet—with a delectable hole in the middle, to raise blisters, like a cupping-glass.
1850. W. Irving, Goldsmith, i. 23. At the return of peace, having no longer exercise for the sword, he resumed the ferule, and drilled the urchin populace of Lissoy.
1875. Farrar, Seekers after God, I. ii. 24. Yet these were the despicable minutiæ which every schoolmaster was then expected to have as his fingers’ ends, and every boy-scholar to learn at the point of the ferule—trash which was only fit to be unlearned the moment it was known.
3. attrib. and Comb., as † ferule-rod; † ferule-fingered a., whose fingers are liable to the ferule.
1528. Impeachm. Wolsey, 192, in Furnivall, Ball., I. 358. Be ware of the Ferrall Rodde!
1620. Bp. Hall, Hon. Mar. Clergy, 127. It may be he thinks of those ancient ferule-fingred Boy-Popes.
