scourge.
A whip, often made of leather and having multiple tails; a lash.
Meaning & usage
A whip, often made of leather and having multiple tails; a lash.
He flogged him with a scourge.
A person or thing regarded as an agent of divine punishment.
A source of persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble, such as a cruel ruler, disease, pestilence, or war.
Graffiti is the scourge of building owners everywhere.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English scourge (“a lash, whip, scourge; affliction, calamity; person who causes affliction or calamity; shoot of a vine”), and then either: * from Anglo-Norman scorge, escorge, escurge, or Old French scurge, escourge, escorge, escorgiee, escurge (modern French escourgée (“(archaic) whip made of leather strips”)), either: ** from Vulgar Latin *excoriāta (“strip of hide; a scourge”), from Late Latin excoriāre, the present active infinitive of excoriō (“to strip the skin from, to skin”), from Latin ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’) + corium (“skin; hide, leather”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off, sever; to divide, separate”)); or ** from Latin ex- (intensifying prefix) + corrigia (“a whip”) (from corrigō (“to make right, correct; to reform”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to righten; to straighten”)); or * from Middle English scourgen (verb) (see etymology 2). Cognates Italian scuriada, scuriata
To strike (a person, an animal, etc.) with a scourge (noun etymology 1 sense 1) or whip; to flog, to whip.
To drive, or force (a person, an animal, etc.) to move, with or as if with a scourge or whip.
To punish (a person, an animal, etc.); to chastise.
To cause (someone or something) persistent (and often widespread) pain and suffering or trouble; to afflict, to torment.
Of a crop or a farmer: to deplete the fertility of (land or soil).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English scourgen (“to whip, scourge; to afflict; to punish”), and then either: * from scourge (noun) + -en (suffix forming infinitives of verbs); or * from Anglo-Norman escorger, and Old French escorgier (“to whip, to scourge”), which are either: ** from Anglo-Norman scorge, escorge (noun), etc., or Old French scurge, escourge (noun), etc. + -er (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs); or ** from Vulgar Latin *excorrigiō, from Latin ex- (intensifying prefix) + corrigia (“a whip”); or ** directly from Late Latin excoriāre. See further at etymology 1.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.