A whip of that material; hence, as a verb, to flog.
1789. They will work on your fields; and if they are negligent, you will give them the cow-skin.—American Museum, v. 92/2 (Jan.).
1799. I am a constable, and may therefore kick, cuff, beat, bruise, cowskin, or kill any man I please.—The Aurora, Phila., May 20.
1801. Dinah was armed with a cow-skin, while Cloe had nothing but the simple weapons of nature.—Mass. Spy, June 24.
1801. She made me strip off my short gown, and gave me a severe whipping with a cow-skin.—Id., Sept. 2.
1801. The cow-skin, or the horse-pond, is, perhaps, the best argument.—The Port Folio, i. 180 (Phila.).
1803. You must have no sensibility,—no, none at all; you must whip, flog, cut, slash, hickory, and cow-skin, all the same: wisely keeping in mind that it is better to be the butcher than the calf.—Id., Nov. 30.
1806. Pointing with the end of his cow-skin to a gentleman … walking before them.—Corr., Balt. Ev. Post, Sept. 16, p. 3/1.
1809. A green or untanned cowskin whip.—The Repertory, Oct. 6 (Boston).
1818. The enraged barrister, with a hand-whip, or cow-hide as they are called, laid on so keenly that he actually cut his jacket to ribbons in defiance of the knife.—M. Birkbeck, ‘Letters from Illinois,’ p. 69 (Phila.).
1824. He took up a cow-hide, and applied it to his back.—Nantucket Inquirer, May 31.
1825. Teach a slave to labor for the love of liberty and you will soon find that the cow-hide is an unnecessary appendage to an overseer.—Corr., New Harmony Gazette, Oct. 15, p. 19/3.
1832–4. Dacia, that needed cow-hiding for insolence.—De Quincey, ‘The Cæsars.’ (N.E.D.)
1838. Who can blame her, after such evidence, for reporting that Charleston ladies carried cowskins in their pockets!—Caroline Gilman, ‘Recollections of a Southern Matron,’ p. 260.
1855. He got his skin well beaten,—cow-hided, as we may say.—Carlyle, ‘Misc.’ (1857), iv. 356. (N.E.D.)
1857. His lady had subsequently cow-hided him in the streets of his native city in retaliation of certain slanders directed against her fair fame.—T. B. Gunn, ‘New York Boarding-houses,’ p. 215.
1858. Nobody has the right to cowhide you for it.—J. G. Holland, ‘Titcomb’s Letters,’ p. 183.
