scourge
Americannoun
noun
-
a person who harasses, punishes, or causes destruction
-
a means of inflicting punishment or suffering
-
a whip used for inflicting punishment or torture
verb
-
to whip; flog
-
to punish severely
Other Word Forms
- scourger noun
- scourgingly adverb
- self-scourging adjective
- unscourged adjective
- unscourging adjective
Etymology
Origin of scourge
1175–1225; (noun) Middle English < Anglo-French escorge, derivative of escorgier to whip < Vulgar Latin *excorrigiāre, derivative of Latin corrigia thong, whip ( ex- 1 ); (v.) Middle English < Old French escorgier
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"We will never stop fighting to end the scourge of waste crime that scars our environment and communities."
From BBC
It’s both a possibly sophisticated performance enhancer and the scourge of picky eaters, brand new to elite endurance athletes, but all too familiar to generations of intransigent five-year-olds.
Countries on Saturday elected Chile's COP climate summit chief negotiator to revive stalled talks on striking a landmark global treaty tackling the scourge of plastic pollution.
From Barron's
First, the bad news: “Snowcrete” is the treacherous ice that results when rain, imprecise or nonexistent plowing and insufficient salting turn what was once fluffy white snow into a dense and dirty scourge.
By 1529, she had died, possibly succumbing to smallpox, a European scourge.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
