thrash
v.— «British soldiers were ordered by their commanding officer to “thrash” Iraqi civilians rounded up in an anti-looting operation, a court martial in Germany was told yesterday. In military slang, thrash means strenuous physical exercise or putting someone through their paces.» —“Soldiers had order to ‘thrash,’ trial told” by Audrey Gillan in Osnabruck, Germany Guardian (U.K.) Jan. 26, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
Why do we write the sound of a dog barking as bow wow? Isn’t that noise more like woof, woof or arf, arf or ruff ruff? Surprisingly, the oldest of these is bow wow, or as William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest (Bookshop|Amazon), bowgh wawgh...