flagellist

Noun

flagellist (plural flagellists)

1. One who administers punishment by whipping.
   • Keats, of the noted Eton school, was perhaps the best flagellist of this century, and it is said of him in Cooper's History of the Rod, that on one occasion, when a confirmation was to be held for the school, each master was requested to make out a list of candidates from his own form.1874, The Pennsylvania School Journal - Volume 23, page 74
   • They hold the head of the defendant, he nowise resisting, upon the ground, and bare his thighs, while the falgellist administers the twenty strokes with a flat bamboo cricket-bat.1897 November, Edward A. Irving, “Tiger Majesty”, in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, volume 162, number 985, page 704
2. One who whips him or herself as an act of religious penitence; flagellant.
   • The Christian flagellist might, it is probable, draw as much blood from his back in a year, as did the frantic priest of Moloch from his sides and arms ; or perhaps more ; but yet it were better done with the Scourge than with the Knife.1853, Isaac Taylor, Fanaticism, page 95
   • A proud, a vain, an envious, a jealous, an uncharitable heart may beat as well under the hair shirt of the self-torturing flagellist as under the purple robes of the monarch ; and Antony in his dreary cell and Simon Stylites on his lonely pillar may have been as far from the kingdom of heaven as...1882, Robert Young, Anonymous personages
3. One who whips others or is whipped by others as a sexual fetish.
   • Then comes the next and the next until the sadist, the flagellist, the criminally insane demand their places, and society ceases to exist.1950, James Barr, Quatrefoil: a novel, page 310
   • Many people advocate the tightening of the law both to protect children from flagellists and to suppress flagellant pornography.1954, Selections from Freedom - Volume 3, page 6
4. One who is abusive or punishing.
   • No reasonable man dare gainsay that it is not the function of government to constitute itself as a flagellist for either side of the industrial problem.1961, Labor Law Journal - Volume 12, page 123
   • The new seven-strong cabinet with Mellish as the new flagellist, is consistent with the anti-democratic trend towards corporate rule.1969, Comment: Communist Fortnightly Review - Volume 7, page 307