different between flail vs whack
flail
English
Etymology
From Middle English flaile, flayle, from earlier fleil, fleyl, fle??l, flegl, from Old English fligel, *flegel (“flail”), from Proto-Germanic *flagilaz (“flail, whip”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps related to Old French fil and Latin f?lum ("a fine thread or wire, a filament", i.e. a defiling instrument for the thrashing of a wire). Cognate with Scots flail (“a thresher's flail”), West Frisian fleil, flaaiel (“flail”), Dutch vlegel (“flail”), Low German vlegel (“flail”), German Flegel (“flail”). Possibly a native Germanic word from Proto-Germanic *flag-, *flah- (“to whip, beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh?k- (“to beat, hit, strike; weep”); compare Lithuanian plàkti (“to whip, lash, flog”), Ancient Greek ????????? (pl?gnúnai, “strike, hit, encounter”), Latin plang? (“lament”, i.e. “beat one's breast”) + Proto-Germanic *-ilaz (instrumental suffix); or a borrowing of Latin flagellum, diminutive of flagrum (“scourge, whip”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?lag-, *b?la?- (“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): /fle?l/
- Rhymes: -e?l
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.
Synonyms
- threshel, thrashel
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
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
- Synonym: thrash
- 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.
Translations
See also
- flail on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- Flail in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
flail From the web:
- what flails
- what's flail chest
- what's flailing mean
- what frail means in spanish
- what flail around meaning
- what flail in tagalog
- what flail joint meaning
- what's flail joint
whack
English
Etymology
Uncertain. Originally Scottish. Probably onomatopoeic, although possibly a variant of thwack.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /wæk/
- (without the wine–whine merger) IPA(key): /?æk/
- Rhymes: -æk
- Homophone: wack (accents with the wine-whine merger)
Noun
whack (plural whacks)
- The sound of a heavy strike.
- The strike itself.
- The stroke itself, regardless of its successful impact.
- (US, slang) An attempt, a chance, a turn, a go, originally an attempt to beat someone or something.
- C'mon. Take a whack at it.
- 40 bucks a whack.
- (originally Britain cant, dated) A share, a portion, especially a full share or large portion.
- 1906, Jack London, White Fang, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 16,[1]
- “It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’ in here at feedin’ time an’ gettin’ its whack of fish.”
- 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: Appleton, Chapter VII, page 108,[2]
- “ […] O'Cannon's a taxpayer. He pays his whack towards the upkeep of the State School up in town—”
- 1951, Katherine Mansfield, Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922,
- For one thing I had a splendid supper when I got on board—a whack of cold, lean beef and pighells, bread, butter ad lib., tea, and plenty of good bread.
- 2014, Anthony Pritchard, Grand Prix Ferrari (page 203)
- There were problems over the installation of the engine and the handling. The team had paid top whack for the two Coopers, but the company gave them no help at all.
- 1906, Jack London, White Fang, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 16,[1]
- (obsolete) A whack-up: a division of an amount into separate whacks, a divvying up.
- (US, obsolete) A deal, an agreement.
- 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Ch. vi, page 70:
- "I'll stay if you will."
"Good—that's a whack."
- "I'll stay if you will."
- It's a whack!
- 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Ch. vi, page 70:
- (typography, computing, slang) The backslash, ??\??.
- del c:\docs\readme.txt
- Delete c colon whack docs whack readme dot text.
- del c:\docs\readme.txt
Derived terms
- full whack
- have a whack at
- out of whack
- take a whack at
- top whack
- wacky
- whack up, whack-up
Translations
Verb
whack (third-person singular simple present whacks, present participle whacking, simple past and past participle whacked)
- To hit, slap or strike.
- G. W. Cable
- Rodsmen were whacking their way through willow brakes.
- G. W. Cable
- (slang) To kill, bump off.
- (transitive, slang) To share or parcel out (often with up).
- to whack the spoils of a robbery
- 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, London: G. Newbold, Volume 2, p. 152,
- When the sewer-hunters consider they have searched long enough […] the gang […] count out the money they have picked up, and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope, &c.; this done, they then, as they term it, “whack” the whole lot; that is, they divide it equally among all hands.
- (sports) To beat convincingly; to thrash.
- 2012, Ryan Pyette, Majors, Panthers play mind games, The London Free Press:
- The fidgety Majors were whacked 9-1 by the Kitchener Panthers at Couch and now trail their rivals 2-0 in an increasingly uncomfortable best-of-seven Intercounty Baseball League first-round series.
- 2012, Ryan Pyette, Majors, Panthers play mind games, The London Free Press:
- (Britain, chiefly in the negative) To surpass; to better.
- 2012, Steve Cullen, Total Flyfisher:
- Recently I was over in Ireland, I love the place, proper fishing, can't whack it!
- 2012, Steve Cullen, Total Flyfisher:
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:kill
Derived terms
- whack off
- whack the illy
Translations
Adjective
whack (comparative whacker, superlative whackest)
- Alternative form of wack (“crazy”)
- That's whack, yo!
- 2007, Joyce E. Davis, Can't Stop The Shine, page 51:
- As they joked about the big butts on female celebrities and what rappers had the whackest lyrics, Malcolm paid little attention to Kalia besides squeezing her hand or grabbing her arm to hold himself up […]
References
- Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "whack, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1923.
whack From the web:
- what whack means
- what whack wears
- what's whack-a-mole mean
- what's whack-a-mole
- what whack job mean
- what whack your ex
- wacky means
- wreck means
you may also like
- flail vs whack
- study vs deterrent
- misleading vs hallucinatory
- determining vs patent
- solely vs essentially
- ritualistic vs external
- befuddle vs muddle
- force vs jimmy
- yield vs progeny
- unrealised vs undisclosed
- foxy vs shifty
- aptitude vs accomplishment
- split vs chasm
- meaningful vs perceptive
- cowardly vs atrocious
- relevance vs germaneness
- bafflement vs complication
- outrageous vs coarse
- offhand vs phlegmatic
- trivial vs minute