Scourge comes from Old French escorge ('a whip'), from escorgier ('to whip'), from Vulgar Latin *excorrigiare, from Latin ex- ('thoroughly') + corrigia ('a thong, strap'). The historical chain includes Latin corrigia. Older glosses in the chain include "a whip", "to whip", "thoroughly", and "a thong, strap", which help explain the semantic range of the modern word. Morphologically, scourge is best read as compound and borrowing, yielding an English noun and verb shaped by both form history and later usage. In current English it functions as a noun and verb, with the sense "a cause of great suffering; a whip; to afflict or punish severely". English derivatives include scourger. The result is an English noun and verb whose etymology preserves the older forms while supporting the word's specialized modern meaning.