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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:

He therefore scourges them with inward trials, vastly more painful than any outward tribulation could be; thus crucifying them to self.

During all the subsequent winter she had scourged herself inwardly for her own imprudence, her quite unnecessary folly in so doing.

It is difficult to give an adequate idea of the change, or of the injurious effects of the climate under the influence of this scourge.

These Indians are a real scourge to us dwellers on the border; letting one escape when caught is like setting a ferocious brute at liberty.

It strengthens every vice, blights every virtue, and infects all society like a pestilence: in short, it is the scourge of a nation.

Hospital gangrene, the scourge and terror of the wounded, soon shows itself, and cannot be arrested by any known surgical means.

No other danger, whether from hunger or cold, Indians or wild beasts, was so dreaded by the explorers as these tiny scourges.

Slavery is always slavery; always the same foul, haggard, and damning scourge, whether found in the eastern or in the western hemisphere.

When other incitements fail, fear and remorse following behind scourge men forward; but ideals in front are the chief stimulants to growth.

More and more she seemed to him like a mother of sorrows, a child unjustly scourged into the dark mysteries of passion and pain.

Leprosy is the last stage, the apogee of this scourge; but a thousand other ills, less hideous but still cruel, raged everywhere.

Scourging, banishment or murder were the measures adopted to enforce silence, and these terrible agents proved fully potent to accomplish the end.

Is it possible that as this simple remedy becomes better known, we may find that cruel scourge, distemper, disarmed of its terrors?

In the Scourge of Villainy he sneered at his own poem Pygmalion, and here he is referring contemptuously to his own achievements in satire.

Should the physician sacrifice his life in order that the devastating scourge may give up its secret and other lives be saved?

Their hands are plunged in boiling pitch, their shoulders are scourged with red-hot iron, and their necks are sawn with wooden saws.

To destroy this fly and thus end the scourge he recommended the annihilation of the crocodile, on whose blood the fly feeds.

Our epoch requires strong minds to scourge those frivolous, contemptible, malicious beings, repulsive as it is to my feelings to cause pain to any man.

Who saw so clearly the social danger of marriages of persons infected with the new scourge of Europe, so violently abhorred by Erasmus?

The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged, however, by the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the sortie.

In this painful attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges, or burnt in the most tender parts with red-hot plates of iron.

And such like, while Satan kept beating them with wool cards and other sharp scourges, without attending to their entreaties or complaints.

Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence, "chastity" and "purity," we have reaped the harvests of prostitution, venereal scourges and innumerable other evils.

And not ceasing so, he was thereupon sore scourged for the confession of his faith, and yet after that imprisoned again afresh.

These frightful scourges, that have grown so familiar, are wielded by us alone; and belief in their superhuman origin is becoming rarer and rarer.

Its career has not been more deadly, perchance, than was his during the time that the earth was scourged with his presence!

In the first place, let us endeavor to ascertain the cause, and secondly, to suggest means for the mitigation or prevention of this scourge.

A day for public thanksgiving for the supposed total deliverance of that country from the scourge of Leprosy, was enjoined, in 1742.

The whole of them were found guilty of sedition, three were sentenced to be hung, and several of the other conspirators to be scourged.

Not a word more, or, despite the army at your back, I'll have you seized and scourged, and your head flung to the jackals.

Besides epidemiological researches, applications on a large scale will be made of preventive measures for the protection of the agricultural population against the scourge.

The dogma of a rude nature full of secret forces found utterance at length under the scourge of a resentment of very mingled quality.

They came to us in hundreds and were mercifully held back from a scourge for which they would have been both food and fuel.

She was only a suppliant to be spared from ridicule: spared from the application of the scourge she had woven for herself.

Occasionally the dry rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting its head after the scourging; that was all.

There are wide, open reaches, and still, deep, shadowy spaces between overhanging woods, and passages of lively water scourging a rocky bed.

The same voice that asks for their liberation renounces in the same breath an odious pretension, for whole generations the scourge of peaceful commerce.

Until science, however, has spoken more definitely, I suppose that we shall continue to associate a visitation of this terrible scourge with unsanitary conditions.

He who does the like in an enemy's country when impelled by no necessity, or induced by feeble reasons, becomes the scourge of mankind.'

This poor wretch was scourged, had his limbs broken, his nose and hands cut off, and his eyes gouged out of their sockets.

This festival was established to commemorate the deliverance of the earth from a giant, who had been a great scourge to the people.

In these days truthfulness and sincerity are sorely afflicted in the clutches of falsehood, and justice is tormented by the scourge of injustice.

Sheltering rocks there are, to be sure, but their comfort is small to the man smitten with the scourge of the crowded city.

Her lovely body, bared, shuddered every time that the straps of the scourge curled around it with a pang not without voluptuous pleasure.

We youngsters did not know why our elders were so terror-stricken when they heard of it, until the scourge had come and gone.

All three were suffering from the lacerations of the Roman scourge, and one was so far weakened that he fell under his burden.

Still, as the winter wore on, the immense army without the walls were as great sufferers by that scourge as the population within.

The two greatest scourges are small-pox and diphtheria, and an enormous number of deaths occur annually from the latter disease in early spring.

Fines, scourging, mutilation, and banishment for first and second offenses, and death for the third, were imposed for the smallest infraction.

In the presence of such a social scourge I have heard a witty talker pronounce it the golden rule of conversation to know nothing accurately.

Let us hope so; for of all pestilences which have ever scourged humanity, and desolated empires, none approach in magnitude those of the plague.

"You are my conscience, dear woman, and you know my thoughts; spare me therefore a little, for the spoken word smites like a scourge."

Those who dwelt in the lodges where the scourge entered, fled from their stricken kinsmen as from the visible body of Death.

They spat upon him and buffeted him, they scourged him, they mocked him, they laid the heavy cross on his bruised shoulders.

Has it endeavored to further morality, to promote sobriety, to suppress vice, to punish crime, to abolish drunkenness, and to curb and scourge lawlessness?

His short experience of soldiering, gave him, as has been said, a horror of war, and against this scourge he preached with untiring zeal.

There was no balm or succor in that empty sky; blue it was as sapphires, but savage with rays that scourged like flaming brass.

I sought shelter from the storm in a grotto which afforded me some protection; but another scourge came to the assistance of the wind.

And the fact that had transformed her blossoming branch into the thorny scourge was that Jack's adored wife she would never be.

I trust that the preventive blessing of vaccination has or will be extended to a country so liable to be afflicted with this dreadful scourge.

Tuberculosis is a perfectly frightful scourge to these unfortunate captives, causing not infrequently thirty, fifty, and even sixty per cent of the deaths.

It was done with an ox-hide scourge, or thong, and sixty strokes were ordered to be publicly inflicted for a gross assault on a superior.

This scourge continued till the spring of 1821, when the locusts disappeared suddenly, and the crop of that year was a bountiful one.

Nicolas was scourged with leather thongs on the back and limbs, and his arms extended, so that they became for a time paralyzed.

Still pursuing a southerly course, these human scourges made themselves the terror of the coast, plundering, burning, and destroying on land and sea.

He gave his message to the world, and passed on, scourged, depressed, undone, because the world did not accept the truths he voiced.

Bowed in sadness to the earth, which, but for them, would remain uncultivated, they cursed the scourge of war as identified in his person.

Then all grows calm, but the blood is changed, and ulcers prepare the way for syphilis, the scourge of the fifteenth century.

His laughter is often insolent, but he is more often the preacher, scourge in hand, who ruthlessly unveils all the dark side of life.

He saw and predicted with composure all the horror and shame of the Passion, the betrayal and desertion, the scourging and spitting.

We shall, therefore, attempt, in the following pages, to present the reader with a succinct, but accurate and continuous, statement of this fatal scourge.

Reaching the small finger, the thief is seized and severely scourged with the rod, and a roar of laughter is raised by the youngsters.

The people fled in terror from their quaking homes, and scourges of bitter rain and biting hail drove them far out upon the plains.

Empedocles caused two small rivulets to be conducted into it, which made its current more rapid; the noxious vapors dispersed and the scourge subsided.

We must act at once and constantly, so that the Republic may be saved, while Slavery is scourged from this temple consecrated to Freedom.

The people flee more eagerly from a scourge the severity of which they hold in horror enhanced by the recent memory of its infliction.

For a quarter of an hour he proved a perfect scourge to those friends of his to whose various stories he had just listened so obligingly.

He was afterwards taken to the Tower, where he was scourged every day for a fortnight, and at last condemned as a relapsed heretic.

Her passion was consummated; like the Savior, she had the nails and the crown of thorns, the scourged limbs, the pierced side.

What, after all, is the healing of a few blistered feet, compared with the scourge of leprosy, eczema, itch, psoriasis, and what not?

Philip declared, that as his father had chastised his people with a scourge, he would make them feel the effect of a whip of scorpions.

Ye are my witnesses, that four years ago, when there were yet no signs of war and tribulation, I preached the coming of the scourge.

A tyrannical King who respects not the laws, and is only directed by his passions and caprice, is the scourge of his people.

She had seen her friends and neighbors scourged naked through the street, among them her brother, who was banished on pain of death.

Nay, the very Furies themselves ceased to scourge their victims, and the snakes that mingled with their locks hung down, forgetting to hiss.

The intolerable scourge fetched a stifled scream from her and drove her pacing, but there was no escape; she returned to meet it.

And these are feelings that die out in most of us under the scourge of disappointment and leave something worse than heartache in their room.

This malady, the scourge of houses and builders, long engaged the attention of the literary world; and recently was nearly abandoned in despair.

For an hour, without intermission, this terrible scourging continued, when, reeking with perspiration, Joe threw down the rod, and took up the shovel.

Drink, opium, and poverty have contributed to their ruin, and the tribe is scourged by the ravages of a disease to which they were new.

The size of the bills he presented to Ferdinand and Isabel for scourging the infidel is the thing he is best remembered for in Cordova.

It costs these ranch men thousands of dollars each year to fight this scourge of locusts, and as yet no permanent remedy has been discovered.

Where locks and bolts, scourges and cudgels, are the guardians of female chastity, it is only preserved when there is no opportunity to lose it.

A great storm arose and destroyed the bridge, and the Persian despot ordered the Hellespont scourged with whips in token of his displeasure.

Nor should wise legislators wholly govern themselves by precedents, and conclude that, since scourging has so long prevailed, some virtue must reside in it.

The occasional stopping of a few travelers, the clearing out of a carriage, and even the pillaging a country house, are neither religious nor political scourges.

Of preventable diseases none should receive more attention than typhoid fever, because it is a great scourge and yet it can be prevented by simple means.

These terrible scourges have afflicted the capitalist world, and it is the workers and their families that have borne them in their own persons.

Several shops were closed in every street; dwellings were often left empty, the inmates having been smitten or driven away by the fatal scourge.

The foreign war is a deadly scourge so long as the body politic is suffering from the convulsions of revolution, and from divided counsels.