Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of birching.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word birchings.

Examples

  • Public birchings would make more money than the lottery.

    Suburban Kids With Biblical Names « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2006

  • Young gentlemen, with a lively recollection of their own construings and birchings, are only too happy in the opportunity of sitting with bent brows and uplifted rod, watching for a false quantity or similar peccadillo, which may justify a withering rebuke or a vigorous flagellation.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 Various

  • As to children, who shall say what canings and birchings and terrifyings and threats of hell fire and impositions and humiliations and petty imprisonings and sendings to bed and standing in corners and the like they have suffered because their parents and guardians and teachers knew everything so much better than Socrates or Solon?

    Treatise on Parents and Children George Bernard Shaw 1903

  • Hebrew under Mr. Burslem at the grammar school on the hill, the amazing news came one day that Bob Clive, the wild boy who had terrorized the tradespeople, plagued his master, led the school in tremendous fights with the town boys, and suffered more birchings than any scholar of his time -- Bob Clive, the scapegrace who had been packed off to India as a last resource, had turned out, as his father said, "not such a booby after all" -- had indeed proved himself to be a military genius.

    In Clive's Command A Story of the Fight for India Herbert Strang

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.