[f. prec. vb.]
† 1. ? A threshing implement, a flail: cf. THRESHEL.
1669. Penn, No Cross, xviii. § 10 (1682), 368. That the Cart, the Plough, the Thrash should be in that continual Severity laid upon Nineteen parts of the Land, to feed the inordinate Lusts and delicious Appetites of the Twentieth.
2. An act or the action of thrashing or threshing; a blow, stroke, knock; a beat or beating.
1840. Hood, Kilmansegg, Fancy Ball, iii. Tories like to worry the Whigs,… Giving them lashes, thrashes, and digs.
1898. Blackw. Mag., Sept., 376. It [a boat’s progress] was a long monotonous thresh for the rest of the afternoon.
1899. Crockett, Black Douglas, xlii. 305. The thresh of the rain upon the lattice casement.
1902. J. Masefield, Salt Water Ball., D Avalos’ Prayer, iii. The wash and thresh of the sea-foam.
1906. Outlook, 20 Oct., 511/2. A thrash of rain.
b. fig. A dash.
1870. J. K. Hunter, Life Stud. Charac., xxxv. I appeared in the court … wi’ a thrash, and had the case settled in a jiffy.
c. In reduplicated form thresh-thresh, representing the continuous sound of threshing.
1904. Blackw. Mag., April, 485. A rhythmic thresh-thresh that had accompanied but hardly broken the silence, suddenly ceased.
