thrash

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: From Middle English thrasshen, a dialectal variant of thresshen, threshen (whence the modern English thresh), from Old English þrescan, from Proto-Germanic *þreskaną, whence also Old High German dreskan, Old Norse þreskja.

1. A beat or blow; the sound of beating.

   “Even among friends at the dinner-table he talked as though he were denouncing them, or someone else, on a platform; he measured his phrases, built his sentences, cumulated his effects, and pounded his opponents, real or imagined. His humor was glow, like iron at dull heat; his blow was elementary, like the thrash of a whale.”

   “As he reeled on wide-braced legs, sobbing for breath, the jungle and the moon swimming bloodily to his sight, the thrash of bat-wings was loud in his ears.”

2. The roar and smoke of a particularly powerful diesel engine.

   “The private CHENGDE STEELWORKS Class SY / JS 2-8-2 total thrash, some double-heading/double-banking, then to YEBAISHOU where Class QJ 2-10-2 operate freight & some passenger China Rail services”

   “'Forty bashers' are those whose aim in life is to travel behind a Class Forty diesel electric, and their communal exuberance is often expressed in controlled arm movements out of the carriage windows (known as 'windmilling') usually in the course of a 'hellfire thrash' (when the locomotive is producing a characteristic sound at high speed and probably throwing out characteristic clag).”

3. Ellipsis of thrash metal.

verb

Etymology: From Middle English thrasshen, a dialectal variant of thresshen, threshen (whence the modern English thresh), from Old English þrescan, from Proto-Germanic *þreskaną, whence also Old High German dreskan, Old Norse þreskja.

1. To beat mercilessly.

   “But in the town it was well known, when they got home at night, their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives.”

   “The rural Midland & Great Northern backwaters from Norfolk to Leicester closed in February 1959 before they could be used there, and thrashing them on the GN main line instead resulted in a memorably poor ride and rattling windows, caused by vibration from their engines and suspect suspension.”

2. To defeat utterly.

   “Pardew made five changes to the side that thrashed West Ham 5-0 on Wednesday - with players such as James Perch and Alan Smith given the chance to underline their case for a regular starting berth.”

3. To thresh.
4. To move about wildly or violently; to flail; to labour.

   “I rather would be Maevius, thrash for rhymes, / Like his, the scorn and scandal of the times.”

   “As performers, we girls have our hair. That's the real thing guys want to see. They love to see the long hair move. They want you to thrash it.”

5. To extensively test a software system, giving a program various inputs and observing the behavior and outputs that result.
6. In computer architecture, to cause or undergo poor performance of a virtual memory (or paging) system.