Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Flail
Flail
,Noun.
[L.
flagellum
whip, scourge, in LL., a threshing flail: cf. OF. flael
, flaiel
, F. fléau
. See Flagellum
.] 1.
An instrument for threshing or beating grain from the ear by hand, consisting of a wooden staff or handle, at the end of which a stouter and shorter pole or club, called a swipe, is so hung as to swing freely.
His shadowy
flail
hath threshed the corn. Milton.
2.
An ancient military weapon, like the common flail, often having the striking part armed with rows of spikes, or loaded.
Fairholt.
No citizen thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small
flail
, loaded with lead, to brain the Popish assassins. Macaulay.
Webster 1828 Edition
Flail
FLA'IL
,Noun.
An instrument for thrashing or beating corn from the ear.
Definition 2024
flail
flail
English
Noun
flail (plural flails)
- A tool used for threshing, consisting of a long handle with a shorter stick attached with a short piece of chain, thong or similar material.
- A weapon which has the (usually spherical) striking part attached to the handle with a flexible joint such as a chain.
Quotations
- 1631 — John Milton, L'Allegro
- When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
- When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
- 1816 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
- Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail
- Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
- 1842 — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Slave in the Dismal Swamp
- On him alone the curse of Cain
Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain,
And struck him to the earth!
- On him alone the curse of Cain
- 1879 — Henry George, Progress and Poverty, ch V
- If the farmer must use the spade because he has not capital enough for a plough, the sickle instead of the reaping machine, the flail instead of the thresher...
Translations
tool
|
weapon
Coordinate terms
- (weapon): nunchaku
Verb
flail (third-person singular simple present flails, present participle flailing, simple past and past participle flailed)
- (transitive) To beat using a flail or similar implement.
- (transitive) To wave or swing vigorously
- 1937, H. P. Lovecraft, The Evil Clergyman
- He stopped in his tracks – then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards.
- (transitive) To thresh.
- (intransitive) To move like a flail.
- He was flailing wildly, but didn't land a blow.
Synonyms
- (to wave, to swing): thrash
Translations
to wave or swing vigorously
to thresh
See also
- flail on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- Flail in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.