The AI-powered English dictionary
plural flails
A tool used for threshing, consisting of a long handle (handstock) with a shorter stick (swipple or swingle) attached with a short piece of chain, thong or similar material. quotations examples
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end;
1631, John Milton, L'Allegro
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail
1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
On him alone the curse of Cain Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain, And struck him to the earth!
1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Slave in the Dismal Swamp
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...
1879, Henry George, chapter V, in Progress and Poverty
A weapon which has the (usually spherical) striking part attached to the handle with a flexible joint such as a chain. examples
third-person singular simple present flails, present participle flailing, simple past and past participle flailed
(transitive) To beat using a flail or similar implement. examples
(transitive) To wave or swing vigorously quotations examples
Tangling with Ziv, Cameron caught him with a flailing elbow, causing the Israeli defender to go down a little easily. However, the referee was in no doubt, much to the displeasure of the home fans.
2011 October 20, Michael da Silva, “Stoke 3 - 0 Macc Tel-Aviv”, in BBC Sport
He stopped in his tracks – then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards.
1937, H. P. Lovecraft, The Evil Clergyman
(transitive) To thresh. examples
(intransitive) To move like a flail. quotations examples
Undismayed he continued to flail with the broken half of it, denting many a helmet[.]
1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 46