How to Use flagellation in a Sentence

flagellation

noun
  • Maybe your vestal will become obsessed with self-flagellation as a means to feel safe and pure.
    — Jake Muncy, WIRED, 22 Jan. 2016
  • 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
  • Rock still finds room for the funny during his self-flagellation.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 14 Feb. 2018
  • Sale used his postgame interview as a study in self-flagellation.
    — Tara Sullivan, BostonGlobe.com, 15 July 2019
  • 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
  • There is no flagellation, no words of fury or punishment.
    — Leah Dolan, CNN Money, 25 Dec. 2025
  • 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
  • No one can blame Giuliani for engaging in a bit of self-flagellation to save her business.
    — David Harsanyi, National Review, 16 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
  • Why did Harris decide to engage in such self-flagellation in the first instance?
    — Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 17 Feb. 2022
  • Golf is a high form of self-flagellation appreciated only by those who attempt it.
    — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 11 June 2018
  • Begin aggressive self-flagellation for choosing a bad karaoke song.
    — Claire Friedman, The New Yorker, 31 July 2019
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • And the self-flagellation doesn't preclude a little self-flattery, either—especially in the home stretch, when all the hard lessons at last give way to an act of budding-artist integrity.
    — A.a. Dowd, Chron, 3 Nov. 2022
  • 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
  • So does self-flagellation, which Jude and Marek ecstatically perform.
    — New York Times, 13 June 2022
  • Their participation in the flagellation of Cathay is a reminder that their ultimate loyalty is to the party.
    — The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
  • However, no amount of self-deprecation or self-flagellation changes the situation.
    — Christopher L. Gasper, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Aug. 2022
  • The most dramatic incident Albinati relates from his school days involves some bullies whipping a weaker boy, as in a rite of flagellation.
    — Paul Elie, The New Yorker, 19 Aug. 2019
  • The big news here is Democrats playing to their same pattern of reflexive self-flagellation, which generally sets one faction against another to no purpose.
    — James Hohmann, Washington Post, 24 Jan. 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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