Improve your vocabulary by Quiz

Use scourge in a sentence

Definition of scourge:

  • (noun) a whip used to inflict punishment (often used for pedantic humor)
  • (noun) something causes misery or death; "the bane of my life"
  • (noun) a person who inspires fear or dread; "he was the terror of the neighborhood"
  • (verb) punish severely; excoriate

Sentence Examples:

The terrible scourge of the satirist fell bitterly upon the personal and moral deformities of the man.

Thus scourged and despoiled, the emperor, a humbled, woe-stricken man, retreated to the seclusion of his palace.

They could endure the rack, the scourge, the thumbscrew, the iron rake, for facts, not for ideas.

The ninth letter shows how gluttony is condoned, and scourges the familiar casuistic doctrine of mental reservation.

At the least, a prince may animate and inure some meaner persons, to be as it were scourges, to ambitious men.

These traditions are, in the main, probably correct as to the origin of the scourge in this Canadian village.

Their elevated thoughts are carefully unrelated either to the crudity of outward action or to any scourging inner discipline!

Epileptic or falling sickness fits, as they are sometimes denominated, are another very common scourge of secret vice.

It is thus that the scourge of the south has ever reaped rich, teeming harvests from the north.

The real leopard is emboldened by impunity, and often becomes a terrible scourge to the village he infests.

He was, indeed, one of those thieves who are the scourge and the terror of the rural districts.

Never again shall he be crowned with thorns, lacerated by the scourge, and nailed to the accursed tree.

A scourge of epizootic had played havoc with the army animals, and much of the cavalry required remounting.

They prayed with song and with words; they denuded their shoulders and prayed with their scourges.

Scores of men have been scourged and some beheaded, but it is no easy matter to keep down the mob.

"He was the scourge of imposture, the ponderous hammer which smote the brazen idolatry of his age."

We can make exaggeration the scourge of meanness and the magnifier of truth on the broad screen of life.

Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would have scourged out of his garden, certainly: an epicurean of our modern notions.

One who has committed irremediable errors may be scourged by that consciousness into a higher course than is common.

I supposed she had never heard, except casually, of the great scourge of the millinery trade in feathers.

And above all, you are not to regard this personality as an enemy to be scourged and beaten and reviled.

The old king does not spare Menelaus, but makes his tongue a scourge to flay him with invective.

He was stripped, scourged on his back, and then stretched on the rack till his bones were dislocated.

They were scourged with bullets, rockets, and napalm as planes swooped down upon them like hawks scattering chickens.

Instead, his wife was scourged (doubtless for resisting the annexation), his daughters outraged, his chief tribesmen plundered.

With his overwhelming sense of his sins, he was abased under it, and he scourged himself as a hypocrite.

It is the menace of fanatic armies, drunken with phrases and sweeping forward under Lenin like a Muscovite scourge.

Some of them have lost their crown and been in part destroyed by fire, that scourge of Californian forests.

This passage, very characteristic of Poe's criticisms, illustrates both his championship of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes.

I bear it from your battle-driven brothers, scourged to the battlements of Paris by the demons of a wicked government!

Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre.

To one of the priests I so drove home the verbal scourge that his nose bled infernally, that it did!

One Italian, a noted libertine of the times, had the scourge soaked in vinegar, to give the lashes greater pungency.

Downing saw in his attack the beginnings of some deadly scourge which would sweep through and decimate the house.

Goethe scourged it for its "mystic-religious" aspirations, and demanded a more vigorous, cheerful and progressive outlook for German painting.

When the scourging was finished, the officer approached; and when he recognized this Indian, he was even more edified.

He is denounced by moralists, analyzed into species by the curious or scientific, scourged and buffeted by all men.

The more intimate their relationship became, the more voluptuously she scourged herself by her accurate perceptions of his deficiencies.

A face, flushed as the face of Him who scourged the hucksters from the temple, was turned upon him.

Still so dependent on beings who are the scourge of mankind and deface the earth with cruelty and tyranny?

In the month of June of this year, the colony was visited by that afflicting scourge, the Asiatic cholera.

The hair shirt and the scourge were positive pleasures to the ascetic, because they distracted his thoughts from hell-fire.

Very efficacious, one thinks, must have been this scourge which the Greek comic muse wielded so merrily, but so unmercifully.

Most sorrowful of sinners, his morose delectation scourged his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre.

Parasites, in themselves beneficent purifiers of the race, have been thus converted into terrible scourges and the agents of disease.

The ship was scourged onward by the resistless blast, which continued to increase until it blew a perfect hurricane.

And so he had wandered here and there, footsore, weary, searching for peace, scourged forever by the world's displeasure.

The one business of Government is to handcuff, and lock up, and scourge, and shoot, and stab, and strangle.

That the formation of temporary hospitals, and domiciliary succor, are the only measures which can alleviate this great scourge.

The lady having opened her griefs, the father who was shriving her insisted on administering a severe penitential scourging.

Some, such as relaxation, confiscation, fines, scourging, the galleys, reconciliation and abjuration, were within the power of the tribunal.

To be publicly mocked, eternally imprisoned, exiled, scourged, stoned, strangled, hanged, beheaded, and burned, was deemed far too little.

We must and shall conquer, and save the civilized world from a scourge more baleful than any Alaric or Attila.

Germans and French are fleeing together from the scourge of the elements, or are sinking pell-mell into a common grave.

One of the principal scourges has been the so-called black-head disease and this has destroyed the industry in many areas.

Trouble, vexation, molestation, discomfort, plague, nuisance, bore, torment, curse, infliction, abomination, scourge, thorn, bitter pill, gall and wormwood.

Providence has placed a scourge in my hand to drive the idolaters from the Temple, so tell me your trouble.

Wielding a scourge of whipcord and striking home, he drives the object of his contempt in hot anger before him.

Now, as ever, he is the scourge of his more settled neighbors, whose fields he harries and whose families he murders.

I knew a correspondent of a New York journal fearfully to scourge a distinguished German for his ignorance of American geography.

From its habit of despoiling the most valuable cultivated trees of their foliage, it is a great scourge to the Brazilians.

Day by day the nurses and physicians did battle with the foul pestilential scourge they were striving to stifle.

A murmur of assent signified that the villagers had accepted their scourge, with the apathetic fatalism of their race.

And where may a man find more assorted kinds of solitude than on the heat scourged planks of a desert depot.

An emaciated music emanates from the eyes of that sad, restless Venus, to whom love has become a scourge of the senses.

The Danish scourge beggared the land, as in all other respects, so in learning and in all the liberal arts.

The persecution of Diocletian breaking out, they were all scourged, and torn with hooks, kept in chains, and finally beheaded.

And there, sure enough, they had the poor fellows just outside, waiting to be scourged for the propitiating of our wrath.

The citizens of many a State scourged with the scorpions of Italian despots hailed with delight the advent of Venetian rule.

Seven hours a day he spent on his knees in prayer and three times a day he scourged his emaciated body.

Where is Dickens, the hater of the lesser wrongs of Chancery Courts, the scourge of tyrannical beadles and heartless schoolmasters?

How his whip scourges the immorality of the French opera, and his whole soul abhors the sensuality of that stage!

He is no worm for whom the eternal abysses are built as a dungeon and the lightnings are brandished as a scourge.

It is a scourge to the agriculturist, a plague to the architect, and the avowed and determined enemy of all other birds.

Furiously angry, he beat her with his scourge, a terrible Arabian whip, which will tear open even the skin of a camel.

The more sincere the papist is in his belief, the more mercilessly will he swing the scourge and fire the fagot.

He fasted and scourged himself; he practiced all the ordinary forms of maceration and invented new ones, all to no purpose.

The cities of Quebec and Montreal, with many surrounding country places, had been decimated in 1832 by the same terrible scourge.

After death, they inhabit the most pestilential marsh of the kingdom of darkness, and their souls are scourged without mercy.

Imagine a susceptible population decimated by a scourge, and the survivors are plainly those who have evidenced a higher power of resistance.

Struck with terror, men strove to avert the scourge by the various and horrid means prompted by fear and fanaticism.

He would be an absolutist; there would be a little buffeting, spitting, and scourging, followed by an indefinite term of hard labor.

Again, suppose the father should scourge and chasten the son for such offenses, is the relation between them therefore dissolved?

They scourged and lacerated themselves for their sins, marching in processions, and inflicting their blows to the sound of music.

Ants, especially the white ant, pay frequent visits to the house, but the worst scourge of all is the ravenous bedbug.

How had Cato scourged from the forum him who would have given the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome?

Then came the turn of the whipper, who, with equal constancy, offered his back to the scourge of the enraged sufferer.

When the judge has ordered unlawful scourging, the turnkey is not likely to interpret the requirement of safe keeping too leniently.

Ten minutes later, when she had extracted his promise and abandoned him to the costumers, he was scourging his weakness.

He was out to rid the country, his country, of a scourge, a pestilence neither he nor his fellow townsmen would tolerate.

His fall disconcerted the brigade, and a shower of grape shot at the same moment scourging it severely, it retired in confusion.

It proved latterly that this was the beginning of that terrible scourge, Asiatic cholera, which spread, in 1832, over a wide section.

It was a speech so bold that the scourge of the Spanish Main tugged at his whiskers with an air of comical perplexity.

Lastly, this writer bears testimony to the baneful effect the scourge had upon the morals of those who had been spared.

It is a great scourge to the Brazilians, from its habit of despoiling the most valuable of their cultivated trees of their foliage.

Above all, he adjured him to preserve his people from the scourge of war, and use every endeavor to obtain the restoration of peace.

Ambrose below them, on a white horse against a blue sky, prancing forth against the Arians, scourge in hand, is extremely decorative.

Baccarat, that scourge of Parisian clubs, is forbidden, and lovers of play are obliged to content themselves with a harmless rubber of whist.

Like the eremites of old he had been scourged into the desert by remorse and another passion, but time had done its work.

United in her, then, were the sovereign virtues that destine a woman to dominate the world by the scourge of her impure beauty.