tawse

English

Etymology

Apparently a plural form of taw, though attested earlier.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tɔːz/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːz

Noun

tawse (plural tawses)

1. (chiefly Scotland) A leather strap or thong which is split into (typically three) tails, used for corporal punishment in schools, applied to the palm of the hands or buttocks.
   • 1919 March, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, “The Saint and the Hunchback”, in The Wild Swans at Coole, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC, pages 104–105:

     I lay about me with the taws
     That night and morning I may thrash
     Greek Alexander from my flesh, […]

   • 1977, K.M. Elizabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 31:

     [W]hile James Murray might punish a late comer by a stroke on the palm of the hand, the children found his lessons so interesting that he had no need to resort to the "tawse", the traditional leather strap, that descended on the shoulders of Mr Dodds' pupils at the United school.

Alternative forms

• taws

Verb

tawse (third-person singular simple present tawses, present participle tawsing, simple past and past participle tawsed)

1. (transitive, chiefly Scotland) To beat with a tawse.

References

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
• Corpun.com, a specialized website on Corporal Punishments

Anagrams

• Sweat, Weast, awest, swate, sweat, waste, wetas