Other forms: flogging, flogged, flogs
To flog is to beat somebody as a punishment. Flogged in public, a flogging, flog the prisoner.
It was a standard punishment in armies and navies until the nineteenth century and is now unlawful in most places. Figuratively, to flog a dead horse is to waste effort on a lost cause, and in British informal use to flog something is to sell it. Note that the origin of the word is uncertain.
1verbflogTo beat somebody as a punishment.
“In the past, sailors were flogged for disobeying orders.”
2verbsellTo sell something, in British informal use.
“He's trying to flog his old car before he moves abroad.”
flog is a beating.
Flog appears in the seventeenth century, perhaps from Latin flagellare, to whip, or from a native word. Its origin is uncertain.
Proto-Germanic
*flukkōną — to beat
Old English
*floggian
Middle English
*floggen
English, today
flog
Built from
From Middle English floggen (suggested by flogge (“hammer, sledge”), from Old English floggian, a stem variant of Proto-Germanic flukkōną (“to beat”), itself a secondary zero-grade iterative with unetymological -u-, derived from flōkaną. The original zero-grade iterative flakkōną had been misinterpreted as an o-grade. See flack (“to beat”), also as a dialectal noun "a blow, slap". Cognate with Scots flog (“a blow, stripe, flogging”), Scots flog (“thin strip of wood”), Norwegian flak (“a piece torn off, strip”). Alternatively, a a back-formation from flogger, from Low German flogger (“a flail”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Hitting & Pushing