Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To maul or beat severely.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To maul or beat severely; to bruise.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To maul thoroughly or completely.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From be- +‎ maul.

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Examples

  • I will so bruise, beat, and bemaul his pate that he shall never move finger or toe again!

    The Adventures of Robin Hood Howard Pyle 1882

  • And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.

    An Inland Voyage 1878

  • And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.

    The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 1 (of 25) Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.

    An Inland Voyage Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • But this had just the contrary effect; for the whilom Hostess of the Stag o 'Tyne, enraged at the Indignity offered to her, did so bemaul and bewray M.dam M.cphilader with her tongue, shaking her fist at her meanwhile, that the Gaoleress in a fury clawed at least two handfuls of M. Drum's hair from her head, not without getting some smart clapperclawing in the face; whereupon she cries out "M.rther" and

    The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors... George Augustus Sala 1861

  • Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didius’s hands, in order to bemaul Yorick to some purpose — and that the desperate monosyllable Z ... ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle Toby’s good-nature felt a pang for what

    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 2003

  • Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didius’s hands, in order to bemaul Yorick to some purpose — and that the desperate monosyllable Z ... ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle Toby’s good-nature felt a pang for what

    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 2003

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  • "To maul thoroughly." --Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

    May 21, 2009