tongue-boring

English

Noun

tongue-boring (countable and uncountable, plural tongue-borings)

1. (historical) A punishment whereby a hole or bore was made in someone's tongue.
   • 1993, Peter Kolchin, American Slavery (Penguin History, paperback edition, 65)

     Seventeenth-century settlers in the colonies - and usually their children as well - lived in a world that took for granted stocks and tongue-borings, religious proscriptions, fear of witches, and savage repression of the lower orders.