scragging

Verb

scrag (third-person singular simple present scrags, present participle scragging, simple past and past participle scragged)

1. (colloquial, obsolete) To hang on a gallows, or to choke, garotte, or strangle.
   • An enthusiastic mob will scrag me to a certainty the day war breaks out.1899, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne, “Atoms of Empire”, in Pall Mall Magazine
2. To harass; to manhandle.
   • '...I urged him ... to ... try the Ickenham System ... a little thing I knocked together in my bachelor days ... it has a good many points in common with all-in wrestling and osteopathy. I generally recommend it to diffident wooers and it always works like magic...'
     Johnny stared.
     'You mean you...1958, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 15, in Cocktail Time
3. To destroy or kill.
   • [...] I went out lookin' for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me. I abolished him—privatim—scragged him.1897 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Slaves of the Lamp. Part II.”, in Stalky & Co., London: Macmillan & Co., published 1899, →OCLC, page 258

See all 10 meanings of scrag