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Flail

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Acronyms, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
flail [flāl]
(agriculture)
A manual device for threshing consisting of a long wooden handle with a free-swinging stick attached to the end.

flail
A device for breaking or crushing material by means of one or more hammers which are hinged or pivoted about a rotating axle.

Flail 

a primitive agricultural implement for threshing grain, consisting of a wooden handle up to 2 m long and a short (up to 0.8 m) beater connected by a rawhide strap.



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A strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a will--if it was a flail; I was not farmer enough to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese with a stick--driving them along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings; a cooper was at work in a shop which I know he did not make so large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room.
I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands.
Others proposed the "anguille," another kind of recreation, in which a handkerchief is filled with sand, pebbles, and two-sous pieces, when they have them, which the wretches beat like a flail over the head and shoulders of the unhappy sufferer.
 
 
 
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