Whip.
1. (
Saddlery.) An instrument used for driving horses and other animals, or for correction; commonly consisting of a handle, a thong of plaited leather, and a lash of plaited hemp or other fiber.
Frequently, however, the handle and thong are in one, forming a tapering flexible rod; riding-whips are made in this way.
The device is very ancient, being referred to in Proverbs XXVI. 3, and Nahum III. 2. “The noise of a whip, and the noise of the ratting of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots.”
It was in use, however, long before this.
The
Egyptian whip consisted of a short, round wooden handle, and a single or double thong about 2 feet in length, twisted or plaited.
A loop was attached, so that it could be swung from the left wrist while the archer was using his bow. Short, knotted whips, much resembling our riding-whips and the postilions' whips of the last and the early part of the present century, are also shown in the paintings of
Thebes.
The whips of the ancients generally had knots or bronze or leaden (
plumbatum) balls on the lashes to render them more severe.
The priests of
Cybele punished themselves with whips on whose lashes were the
astragali bones of kids.
Greek whips were of leathern thongs, twisted cords of hog's bristles, or sinews of oxen.
The
scorpio was a whip with iron spurs.
The Anglo-
Saxon whip for prisoners was three-lashed.
Switches were used for soldiers.
Eel-skins were used to flog school-boys by the Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
The ancient Scythian whip resembled the
nogaik of the modern Cossacks.
It had a short handle and a single lash, with a round flat piece of leather at the end. The taskmasters of
Egypt and
Persia hurried up their workmen with whips.
Xerxes lashed the laborers who dug the canal across the isthmus of
Athos: and his soldiers were hurried by whips across the
Hellespont bridge, during the 7 days and nights which they occupied in crossing between Abydos and a rocky point in the
Hellespontine Chersonese.
The bridge was about 1 1/2 miles long.
The artillery-driver's whip has an interior stock of raw hide covered with India-rubber cloth, over which is sewed an outer covering of leather.
A loop is attached at the but for suspension.
A lash of thread is attached to the small end.
Fancy whips are made with handles composed of a central core of whalebone stiffened and filled out with rattan; this is inclosed in rubber cloth and covered with rubber cement, over which strands of cotton, silk, or gut are braided by machinery.
2. (
Nautical.)
a. A form of hoisting-tackle.
A single whip (
a,
Fig. 7196) is the most simple purchase in use. It is made by reeving a rope through a single block.
If the fall of the rope of a single whip be spliced round the block of another whip, it becomes
whip on whip (
b) or
whip and runner. Thus two single blocks afford the same purchase as a tackle having a double and a single block, with much less friction.
For other varieties of purchase, see tackle.
[
2770]
In unloading colliers in the
Thames, the bucket of coal is raised by a
whip, a number of cords attached to the fall being grasped by as many men, who mount a wide ladder, and after two or three hauls at the rope, jump to the deck and
whip up the bucket to the landing, where it is dumped.
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Whip-tackle. |
A modified form of this whip is one in which the fall is attached to a platform which slides up and down a ladder.
The man ascends the ladder, steps on to the platform, which descends with his weight and raises the cask or chest.
It is rigged where a large number of pieces of the same size are to be raised, as salt or coffee in bags, flour in barrels, tea in chests.
b. A flag used for signaling.
3. The arm of a windmill, on which a sail is extended.
4. To sew over and over, as the two selvages of stuffs stitched together.
As we say,
whip them together merely; or
whip them down.
