scourge

C2+ Topic:Cause, Change & Process

US /skɝdʒ/ UK /skɜːdʒ/ See IPA manual

Meanings

1

noun
a cause of great suffering; a whip; to afflict or punish severely

Famine was the scourge that emptied the villages that winter.

Thesaurus

Synonyms

1 noun · a cause of great suffering;... affliction plague bane curse whip lash torment

Opposites

blessing boon

Word family

Derived forms scourger

Etymology

From Old French escorge ('a whip'), from escorgier ('to whip'), from Vulgar Latin *excorrigiare, from Latin ex- ('thoroughly') + corrigia ('a thong, strap').

corrigia Latin

View etymology graph ->

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# scourge

**Type:** Word
**Level:** C2+
**Part of speech:** noun
**IPA (US):** /skɝdʒ/
**IPA (UK):** /skɜːdʒ/

## Meanings
1. a cause of great suffering; a whip; to afflict or punish severely

## Examples
- Famine was the scourge that emptied the villages that winter.

## Synonyms
- affliction
- plague
- bane
- curse
- whip
- lash
- torment

## Antonyms
- blessing
- boon

## Derived Forms
- scourger

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: corrigia

## Etymology
From Old French escorge ('a whip'), from escorgier ('to whip'), from Vulgar Latin *excorrigiare, from Latin ex- ('thoroughly') + corrigia ('a thong, strap').

## AI Etymology
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.

## Topics
- Cause, Change & Process

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scourge

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