How to Use flagellation in a Sentence

flagellation

noun
  • The stand-up’s job is one of public self-flagellation in service of the greater good.
    Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2022
  • The question isn’t about self-flagellation, but about what is whiteness, and what has this done to me?
    Greg Kot, chicagotribune.com, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Maybe your vestal will become obsessed with self-flagellation as a means to feel safe and pure.
    Jake Muncy, WIRED, 22 Jan. 2016
  • Rock still finds room for the funny during his self-flagellation.
    Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 14 Feb. 2018
  • Alas, the last few years have brought with them a surfeit of self-flagellation that the more grounded among the citizenry would do well to resist.
    The Editors, National Review, 4 July 2022
  • Hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon are marking the day with rallies, prayers and self-flagellation.
    Washington Post, 11 Sep. 2019
  • No one can blame Giuliani for engaging in a bit of self-flagellation to save her business.
    David Harsanyi, National Review, 16 Feb. 2022
  • The issues the markets have with the Fed may have less to do with an eye toward self-flagellation and more to do with a growing mistrust of the institution.
    Nicole Goodkind, CNN, 18 May 2022
  • Sale used his postgame interview as a study in self-flagellation.
    Tara Sullivan, BostonGlobe.com, 15 July 2019
  • Why did Harris decide to engage in such self-flagellation in the first instance?
    Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 17 Feb. 2022
  • Spend your mornings in prayer and self-flagellation; afternoons in thanks for not being born among the tribals.
    Dennard Dayle, The New Yorker, 22 July 2022
  • What do those choices say to you about their levels of self-flagellation and also change going forward?
    Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Aug. 2022
  • Charlotte, a woman once crippled by her own politeness to the point of self-flagellation, was de-inviting Stanford from lunch.
    Raven Smith, Vogue, 6 Jan. 2022
  • The past year has produced a remarkable amount of hand-wringing and self-flagellation among middle-class white people, not all of it productive.
    Jake Bittle, The New Republic, 8 June 2021
  • And as the actor portrayed Christ's flagellation, one of the film's extras accidentally whipped his back.
    Anthony Leonardi, Washington Examiner, 23 Mar. 2020
  • At a spiritual retreat organized by the school, the boys have fun acting out a flagellation depicted in a painting in one of the bedrooms.
    Tim Parks, Harper's magazine, 19 Aug. 2019
  • Does the Whitney, or Kanders, think this bit of self-flagellation will do anything except make the museum’s leadership look like fools?
    Brian T. Allen, National Review, 25 June 2019
  • Hence his self-flagellation on the Armchair Expert podcast.
    Pradheep J. Shanker, National Review, 18 Apr. 2021
  • With season 1 ending with both Issa and Molly unwillingly alone, would there be more self-flagellation on the menu?
    Maiysha Kai, The Root, 21 July 2017
  • But what is the point of all this flagellation, of self and others, if meanwhile the structures that enable wrongdoing continue to creak and loom, doing business as usual?
    New York Times, 3 Dec. 2020
  • But the Apu wars preceded Azaria’s latest self-flagellation.
    Pradheep J. Shanker, National Review, 18 Apr. 2021
  • This holier-than-thou desire that everyone else must engage in some kind of 24-hour festival of grief is nothing more than self-flagellation.
    The Tylt, AL.com, 25 May 2017
  • Golf is a high form of self-flagellation appreciated only by those who attempt it.
    Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 11 June 2018
  • Usually, this pathway outside Parx Casino is reserved for self-flagellation, a private lament at the last hundred lost.
    Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2017
  • Their participation in the flagellation of Cathay is a reminder that their ultimate loyalty is to the party.
    The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
  • Adam, who has the power of direct address to the camera, has a lot of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag in him, in that his self-flagellation and neuroses build an aura of constant tension even if his intentions are rarely malignant.
    Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 June 2022
  • There’s only so much use in self-flagellation, however.
    Childs Walker, baltimoresun.com, 25 Oct. 2021
  • The collective self-flagellation was, in its own way, as remarkable as the earlier blindness, both of which tell a story about the enduring power of denial in Germany.
    Adrian Daub, The New Republic, 21 Apr. 2021
  • What appeared at first like an admirable dedication to his job reveals itself as more akin to self-flagellation or self-punishment.
    Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 June 2022
  • What had been, for the Greeks, a desire for ostentatious success became in medieval Europe a struggle to control the self through prayer and flagellation—to battle inner badness and become pure.
    Gal Beckerman, The New Republic, 7 May 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flagellation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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