pandy bat
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.83 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
(originally) a stout leather strap reinforced internally with whalebone or even lead, and used at Jesuit schools to inflict corporal punishment on pupils by striking the palm; (latterly, sometimes) more loosely applied to any punishment bat
Example Sentences
- "The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning pain made his hand shrink together […]"
- "1930 Irish Province News, 5th Year No 3 (Irish Province of the Society of Jesus) "Obituary: Fr James Daly" All this punctuated, driven home, by loud-resounding strokes of the pandy-bat, not administered one after another quickly, but at regular intervals."
- "1957 Irish Province News, 32nd Year No 3 (Irish Province of the Society of Jesus) "Obituary: Fr Esmonde White (1875-1957)" While Prefect of Studies in Belvedere Junior House, he combined gentleness with severity in such perfect measure that a past pupil recalls: “He hit very hard with the pandy bat but obviously felt every bit as miserable about it as the unfortunate victim!”"
- "The strap seemed preferable to the cane and the pandybat."
- "Round about here it would seem to me to have become necessary to make some general statement about the Irish Christian Brothers. ... I have heard them blamed for many things. ... Blamed for the pandy-bat, as it was called in Dublin, or the leather as we called it in the North."
- "The procedure was that you knocked on the door and were called in, presented the docket, watched the pandy bat (some were slim, some fat) being removed from a drawer or inside the soutane. You took your punishment on either hand, thanked the priest and withdrew. ... The pandybat was a sort of sjambok slick as a spatula that imparted sudden deadening pain, felt in the head as in either hand, turn and turn about, pain travelling through the nervous system."