flagellate

Updated: May 19, 2025

I can comprehend the pleasure to be got out of the hydraulic engine; but what can be the fascination of a whip, when one has nothing to flagellate but the calves of his own legs, I could never understand. Yet a small riding-whip is the most popular article with the miscellaneous New-Englander at all great gatherings, cattle-shows and Fourth-of-July celebrations.

Oliver Wendell Holmes - The Poet at the Breakfast-Table