whiphandle

I'm for you -- stick, fist, or whiphandle, rifle or bowie-knife.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 Various

As America has become more reliant on foreign lenders, it warns, so it has become more vulnerable to "financial warfare", of the sort America itself threatened to wage on Britain, a big debtor, during the Suez crisis, considered the end of the British Empire because Britain owed so much money to the USA that the USA had a whiphandle over the pound and therefore the British Government.

John Tepper Marlin: I.O.U.S.A. - Fury at (GOP) Fiscal Fiasco 2008