bastinado
/ˌbastɪˈneɪdəʊ
/ /ˌbastɪˈnɑːdəʊ/noun [mass noun]
A form of punishment or torture that involved caning the soles of someone’s feet.One favourite method was the grisly bastinado: turning a slave upside down and beating the soles of their feet until raw....
- The bare feet are beautiful, elegant and feminine but bring to mind the bastinado, the terrible flogging of the feet.
- The act of Bastinado, generally used to punish miscreants but also to elicit answers from torture victims, extends back through history hundreds of years.
verb (bastinadoes, bastinadoing, bastinadoed) [with object]
Punish or torture (someone) by caning the soles of their feet: if she had been hurt he would have had the slave bastinadoed...
- Apart from the bastinadoing other methods were employed, too, such as putting hot irons on the chest.
- There are four capital punishments: beheading, hanging, strangling and bastinadoing to death.
- True, he had simplified several knotty matters by bastinadoing and cutting off the heads of all concerned, but this left a multitude of matters which could not be disposed of in that summary fashion.
Origin
Late 16th century (denoting a blow with a stick): from Spanish bastonada, from bastón 'stick, cudgel', from late Latin bastum 'stick'.