Word.ws English Dictionary

feruling

feruling is the present participle and gerund of ferule.

Meaning of ferule

Verb

ferule (third-person singular simple present ferules, present participle feruling, simple past and past participle feruled)

  1. (transitive) To punish with a ferule.
    • And they were right in their assumption; I could cudgel a great lubberly delinquent of a boy[…]but when it came to feruling a girl[…]my manhood rebelled[…].1862, William S. Woodbridge, Captain Paul's Adventure: A "Charcoal Sketch": Ballou's Dollar Monthly Magazine, Volume 15, page 72

See all 2 meanings of ferule

Noun

feruling (plural ferulings)

  1. Punishment with a ferule.
    • In the old days when feruling was common in the schools, the boys had a belief that if they spit in their hand before the teacher struck it, the ferule would break in two at the first blow.1896, Clifton Johnson, “Charms”, in What They Say in New England (non-fiction), Boston, Massachusetts, United States: Lee and Shepard Publishers, page 43

Forms of feruling

pluralferulings

Questions about feruling

What does feruling mean?
Feruling means punishment with a ferule.
What is feruling the present participle and gerund of?
Feruling is the present participle and gerund of ferule.
What part of speech is feruling?
Feruling is a noun.
What is the plural of feruling?
The plural of feruling is ferulings.

Words near feruling in the dictionary

  1. ferule
  2. feruled
  3. ferules
  4. ferulic
  5. ferulic acid
  6. feruling
  7. ferulings
  8. Ferullo
  9. Ferullos
  10. feruloyl
  11. feruloylated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: feruling (page history and authors); ferule (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “feruling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/feruling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.