How to Use flagellate in a Sentence

flagellate

verb
  • To conclude, my aim in this is not to flagellate myself in a dervish of self-indulgence.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 10 Dec. 2010
  • Some go further, flagellating themselves or using a sword to strike their forehead to draw blood.
    — Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2026
  • Next month, Starbucks will have a self-flagellating session to command compassion in its stores.
    — Stu Bykofsky, Philly.com, 26 Apr. 2018
  • His only way of finding any kind of life for himself is to embrace evil, to stop running away from it, to try to stop morally flagellating himself.
    — Charlotte Observer, 25 Feb. 2026
  • But abstaining from them entirely can make our lives as cramped, joyless, bitter, and self-flagellating as obsessing about our looks does.
    — Charlotte Shane, The Cut, 3 Apr. 2018
  • Lowe, however, was almost self-flagellating in his acceptance speech.
    — Andy Gensler, Billboard, 13 June 2017
  • One Peruvian candidate has taken time to talk about his habit of wearing a wire chain, known as a cilice, every day to flagellate himself.
    — Star Tribune, 8 Apr. 2021
  • Some of the penitents flagellated themselves while walking for hours, beseeching the Madonna to heal them or to cure their sick children.
    — Text By Gaia Pianigiani, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2017
  • For Logan, none of these self-flagellating exercises mattered.
    — Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 23 Mar. 2023
  • Pop stars being badasses, as ever, but expressing doubt, and doing it without the flagellating self-destruction that might have come with an early iteration.
    — Susannah Felts, Longreads, 27 Apr. 2023
  • In the mid-eighties, Habermas went after conservative historians who felt that Germans should no longer flagellate themselves over the Nazi past.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 15 June 2026
  • The seven days culminate with a Sunday procession, which includes hundreds of self-flagellating, hooded penitents.
    — Text By Gaia Pianigiani, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Please, more of Isabella lightly teasing Marty about his tendency to flagellate himself while considering the agony of the human condition.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 17 Oct. 2025
  • The central composer was the twentieth-century Russian ascetic Galina Ustvolskaya, who wrote spiritual music of flagellating force.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 24 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flagellate.' 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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