Fustigate, Toastmasters Word of the Day

For this meeting, I was the grammarian. The role of the Grammarian is to come up with a word of the day and to track how many times it was used in the meeting.

The word I chose for this meeting was "fustigate". Merriam-Webster defines it as

• cudgel
• to criticize severely

Before looking this term up, I did not know what cudgel meant, so I looked it up as well. Come to find out, cudgel means "a short heavy club". When originally definited, fustigate meant to beat someone with a stick. I won't get too deep into the Latin and origins of the word. When it was used in the meeting, most fellow Toastmasters used it as a synonym for criticizing severely.