Self-flagellation

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The practice of whipping oneself as penance for sins. countable, historical, uncountable
  2. 2
    self-punishment inflicted by whipping wordnet
  3. 3
    Intense feelings of guilt. countable, informal, uncountable

    "It was [...] followed by feelings of immense guilt and self-flagellation. What did I do wrong? What did I forget?"

Example

More examples

"Self-flagellation is pointless."

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