Link Centre Dictionary

trounce

US/tɹaʊns/ uncommon uk

verb

1.

beat severely with a whip or rod

  • “The teacher often flogged the students”
  • “The children were severely trounced”
Synonyms
2.

come out better in a competition, race, or conflict

  • “Agassi beat Becker in the tennis championship”
  • “We beat the competition”
  • “Harvard defeated Yale in the last football game”
Synonyms
3.

Origin

The verb is derived from Middle English traunce, trauncen, trancen (“to move about (?); to prance (?); to trample the ground”) (whence modern English trance with the same senses), possibly either: * from Middle English trauncen, transen (“to pass from life to death, die”), from Old French transir (“to cut through, pass through”), from Latin trānsīre, present active infinitive of trānseō (“to cross, traverse; to go over (to a side or faction); to pass over; to exceed, surpass; of time: to elapse, pass; (figuratively) to cease, pass away”), from trāns (“across; beyond”) + eō (“to go”); or * a blend of Middle English tramplen (“to tread on, trample”) + dauncen (“to dance”) or prauncen (“to prance”). The noun is probably derived from the verb.

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

Related verbs

Entails

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.