vbl. sb. [f. as prec. + -ING1.] The action of the vb. FLOG.
1. The practice or system of punishment by blows; an instance of it; a chastisement.
1758. Shenstone, Lett. to Graves, 22 July. I surely have some friend amongst the writers of the Monthly Review; for I have not only escaped a flogging, but am treated with great civility.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xlvii. It’s an excuse not to work. There’s nothing like flogging to cure that disorder.
1851. Ht. Martineau, Hist. Peace (1877), III. IV. xi. 92. The question of military flogging was brought forward year by year by Mr Hume; and by the session of 1833, it was clear that the debate was becoming more and more embarrassing to men who had always spoken with a natural horror of the flogging of soldiers, but who had lately become aware of the weight of military authority on the other side.
2. In various uses. a. The action of forcing up (a rent). b. The flapping (of a sail). c. Fishing. (See FLOG v. 3).
1835. Marryat, Pirate, iii. Keep the sheet fast till it’s down, or the flogging will frighten the lady-passenger out of her wits.
1886. Quarterly Review, CLXIII. 350. When a long day’s flogging has been at last followed by a solitary rise, it requires some nerve to be sufficiently hard on a fish.
1881. Daily News, 9 Sept., 2/1. The tenants were really unable to stand any longer the flogging of rents which they had managed to pay for so many years.
3. attrib. and Comb., as flogging-block, -cove, -stake; flogging-chisel, a large cold chisel used in chipping castings; flogging-hammer, a small sledge-hammer used for striking a flogging-chisel.
1827. in Hansard, Parl. Debates, 12 March, XVI. 1126. Some of the men were brought out so frequently to be flogged, that they were known by the name of the *flogging-blocks.
1851. Thackeray, Eng. Hum., iii. (1876), 219. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging-block.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 886/2. *Flogging-chisel. A chipping-chisel of large size, used in chipping off certain portions of a casting.
a. 1700. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, *Flogging-cove, the Beadle, or Whipper in Bridewell.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 886/2. *Flogging-hammer. A hammer used by machinists, etc., intermediate in size between a sledge and hand hammer.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue, *Flogging stake, the whipping post.
Hence Floggingly adv.
1840. J. T. Hewlett, Peter Priggins, in New Monthly Mag., LVIII. 527. A frown from Mr. Innovate, floggingly put on, hastened his preparations.
