flail – English noun declension

English noun forms of flail

Noun: flail
Singularflail
Pluralflails

Sample Sentences

  • 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:]
  • The carriage washing plant uses four pairs of rotating rag flails and will be capable of dealing with the whole of the diesel units as well as steam stock used for main-line trains. [1957 December 26, “Diesel Depot for Darlington”, in Railway Magazine, page 876:]

Etymology

1. 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.
2. 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”). See: Middle English Nouns 'flayle', Old English Nouns 'fligel', Dutch Nouns 'vlegel', German Nouns 'Flegel', Old Norse Nouns 'flaga', Latin Nouns 'plangō', Latin Nouns 'flagellum', Old Norse Nouns 'blekkja', Italian Nouns 'flagello'.