What does "flog" mean?

flog — meaning, definition & examples

Definition

v. to hit someone or something many times with a whip or a heavy stick. In modern slang, it means to talk about something in a very annoying or boring way for a long time.

v. to strike repeatedly with a whip, scourge, or similar instrument. In contemporary informal usage, it refers to the act of discussing a topic in an excessive, tedious, or repetitive manner.

simple

“The old man used to flog the horses with a long stick.”

contextual

“The politician spent the entire evening trying to flog his new tax plan to the reporters.”

complex

“While the historical records detail the physical flog of the prisoners, the modern usage of the term has shifted toward the psychological exhaustion of being subjected to a relentless, boring monologue.”

From Middle English floggen (suggested by flogge (“hammer, sledge”), from Old English floggian, a stem variant of Proto-Germanic flukkōną (“to beat”), itself a secondary zero-grade iterative with unetymological -u-, derived from flōkaną. The original zero-grade iterative *flakkōną had been misinterpreted as an o-grade. See flack (“to beat”), also as a dialectal noun "a blow, slap". Cognate with Scots flog (“a blow, stripe, flogging”, noun), Scots flog (“thin strip of wood”), Norwegian flak (“a piece torn off, strip”). Alternatively, a back-formation from flogger, from Low German flogger (“a flail”).

Blend of fake + blog.

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.