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单词 flail
释义

flail

English

WOTD – 5 January 2007
Peasants using flails (tool) to thresh cereal.
a flail (weapon)

Etymology

From Middle English flayle, from earlier fleil, fleyl, fleȝȝl, from Old English fligel, *flegel (“flail”), from Proto-West Germanic *flagil, of uncertain origin. Cognate with Scots flail (“a thresher's flail”), West Frisian fleil, flaaiel (“flail”), Dutch vlegel (“flail”), German Flegel (“flail”). Possibly a native Germanic word from Proto-Germanic *flagilaz (“whip”), from Proto-Germanic *flag-, *flah- (“to whip, beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂k- (“to beat, hit, strike; weep”); compare Old Norse flaga (“sudden attack, bout”), Lithuanian plàkti (“to whip, lash, flog”), Ancient Greek πληγνύναι (plēgnúnai, “strike, hit, encounter”), Latin plangō (“lament”, i.e. “beat one's breast”) + Proto-Germanic *-ilaz (instrumental suffix). If so, related also to English flag, flack, flacker.

Alternatively, Proto-West Germanic *flagil may be an early borrowing of Latin flagellum (“winnowing tool, thresher”), diminutive of flagrum (“scourge, whip”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰlag-, *bʰlaǵ- (“to beat”); compare Old Norse blekkja (“to beat, mistreat”). Compare also Old French flael (“flail”), Walloon flayea (“flail”) (locally pronounced "flai"), Italian flagello (“scourge, whip, plague”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /fleɪl/
  • (dialectal, archaic) IPA(key): /fɹeɪl/ (see frail)[1]
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Audio (AU)(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪl

Noun

flail (plural flails)

  1. 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.
  2. 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;
  • 1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
    Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
    Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail
  • 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!
  • 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...

Synonyms

  • frail (obsolete), thrashel, threshel

Coordinate terms

  • (weapon): nunchaku

Derived terms

  • flail chest
  • flail tank

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

flail (third-person singular simple present flails, present participle flailing, simple past and past participle flailed)

  1. (transitive) To beat using a flail or similar implement.
  2. (transitive) To wave or swing vigorously
    Synonym: thrash
    • 2011 October 20, Michael da Silva, “Stoke 3 - 0 Macc Tel-Aviv”, in BBC Sport‎:
      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.
    • 1937, H. P. Lovecraft, The Evil Clergyman
      He stopped in his tracks – then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards.
  3. (transitive) To thresh.
  4. (intransitive) To move like a flail.
    • 1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 46:
      Undismayed he continued to flail with the broken half of it, denting many a helmet[.]
    He was flailing wildly, but didn't land a blow.

Derived terms

  • flail about

Translations

References

  1. Hall, Joseph Sargent (March 2, 1942), “3. The Consonants”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King's Crown Press, DOI:10.7312/hall93950, →ISBN, § 5, page 97.

Further reading

  • flail on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
  • Flail in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Anagrams

  • Filla, alfil
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