thrash
/θɹæʃ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.15 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To beat mercilessly.
verb
To thresh.
verb
To move about wildly or violently; to flail; to labour.
verb
To extensively test a software system, giving a program various inputs and observing the behavior and outputs that result.
verb
In computer architecture, to cause or undergo poor performance of a virtual memory (or paging) system.
Example Sentences
- "But in the town it was well known, when they got home at night, their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives."
- "The rural Midland & Great Northern backwaters from Norfolk to Leicester closed in February 1959 before they could be used there, and thrashing them on the GN main line instead resulted in a memorably poor ride and rattling windows, caused by vibration from their engines and suspect suspension."
- "Pardew made five changes to the side that thrashed West Ham 5-0 on Wednesday - with players such as James Perch and Alan Smith given the chance to underline their case for a regular starting berth."
- "I rather would be Maevius, thrash for rhymes, / Like his, the scorn and scandal of the times."
- "As performers, we girls have our hair. That's the real thing guys want to see. They love to see the long hair move. They want you to thrash it."
- "Even among friends at the dinner-table he talked as though he were denouncing them, or someone else, on a platform; he measured his phrases, built his sentences, cumulated his effects, and pounded his opponents, real or imagined. His humor was glow, like iron at dull heat; his blow was elementary, like the thrash of a whale."
Etymology
From Middle English thrasshen, thresche, threschen, threschyn, threshen, thresshen, tressyn, þreisshe, þresshe, (whence the modern English thresh), from Old English þerscan, þrexan, from Proto-Germanic *þreskaną (“to thresh; to tread”), from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub, turn; to drill, pierce”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch dorsen (“to thresh; to thrash”), German and Luxembourgish dreschen (“to thresh; to thrash”), Yiddish דרעשן (dreshn, “to thresh”), Danish tærske (“to thresh”), Faroese treskja (“to thresh”), Icelandic þreskja (“to thresh”), Norwegian Nynorsk treska, treske, treskja, treskje (“to thrash”), Swedish tröska (“to thresh”), Gothic 𐌸𐍂𐌹𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌽 (þriskan, “to thresh”), Finnish rehkiä (“to drudge; to toil”); also Welsh taradr (“auger, wimble; awl, borer; drill”), Latin terō (“to rub or triturate; to wear away or wear out, consume; to tread; to press with a mill; to pass, spend”), Greek τρίβω (trívo, “to grate; to rub”), Albanian tjerr (“to spin”), Belarusian це́рці (cjérci, “to rub; to polish; to pinch; to grind”), Bulgarian три́я (tríja, “to rub; to chafe; to grind”), Czech třít (“to rub; to spawn”), Polish tarć, treć, trzeć, trzyć (“to rub; to shred; to cut; to chafe; to crush; to spawn”), Russian тере́ть (terétʹ, “to rub; to polish; to grind”), Serbo-Croatian тр̏ти, tȑti (“to rub; to cause friction; to scour; to break, crush”), Slovak trieť (“to rub”), Slovene treti (“to crack open; to rub”), Ukrainian те́рти (térty, “to rub; to scrub”), Armenian թուր (tʻur, “sword”), Sogdian ܕܣܦܪܛܪ (dsprtr, “hand towel”), Hittite 𒋻𒌑𒍣 (tar-ú-zi, “to perform a round dance, to dance in twisting manner”), Tocharian A and Tocharian B tärk- (“to allow, let; to let go”), Sanskrit तर्कु (tarku, “spindle”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *terh₁-, thrasshen, þerscan, *þreskaną
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /θɹæʃ/