noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A severe beating.

   "His mother gave him a drubbing after finding out he'd been stealing."

2. 2
   the act of inflicting corporal punishment with repeated blows wordnet
3. 3
   A thorough defeat.

   "The debate team got a drubbing from the competition."

4. 4
   a sound defeat wordnet

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of drub form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms

bangbashbatbatterybeatingbeating

Example

More examples

"After its drubbing at the polls, the party has to reinvent itself."

Etymology

From drub + -ing.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.