Forms: 6– bastinado; also 6 bastannado, -anado, 7 -onada, 7–8 onado. [a. Sp. bastonada (= It. bastonata, OF. bastonnée) a caning or cudgelling, f. baston stick, staff, cudgel. For termination see -ADO 2: the unaccented o in the second syllable has fluctuated from the first as ă, ŏ, ĭ, tending to settle down under the closest vowel i.]
1. A blow with a stick or cudgel; a whack or thwack; esp. one upon the soles of the feet. arch.
1577. Holinshed, Chron., III. 897/1. Leading him … with buffets and bastanadoes into the borough.
1592. Greene, Art Conny Catch., 25. As many bastinadoes as thy bones will beare.
1598. Hakluyt, Voy., II. 203. Beaten with so many bastonadoes vpon the soles of their feete.
1625. Modell of Wit, 41 b. Lifting up the Cudgell, he gave him therewith halfe a score good bastinadoes.
1849. W. Irving, Mahomed & Succ., xiii. (1853), 58. Let him who drinks wine … receive twenty bastinadoes on the soles of his feet.
2. A beating with a stick; a cudgelling. arch.
1594. T. B., La Primaud. Fr. Acad., II. 717. If a Romane soldior … went out of his ranke … he had the bastannado.
a. 1600. Burleigh, Adv. Q. Eliz., in Harl. Misc. (1809), II. 277. No man loves one the better for giving him the bastinado, though with never so little a cudgel.
1828. Scott, F. M. Perth, xvi. Must I show thee that thou art a captive, by giving thee incontinently the bastinado?
fig. 1595. Shaks., John, II. 463. He giues the bastinado with his tongue.
3. spec. An Eastern method of corporal punishment, by beating with a stick the soles of the culprit’s feet.
1726. Ayliffe, Parerg., 46. Remitted the punishment of Death … and in lieu thereof introduced the Bastinado.
1884. Browning, Ferishtah’s F., 133. To cool his heels Uncarpeted, or warm them—likelier still—With bastinado.
4. A stick, staff, rod, cudgel, truncheon.
1598. Hakluyt, Voy., I. 55. He receiueth an hundreth blowes on the backe with a bastinado, layd on by a tall fellow.
1624. Capt. Smith, Virginia, II. 36. Having a Bastinado … made of reeds bound together.
1878. Wake, Evol. Morality, II. 128. Her paramour receiving a thousand blows of the bastinado.
