Definition of "taws" [taws]

• Chiefly Scots A whip or leather thong used to drive a spinning top. (noun-plural)
• Chiefly Scots A leather whip divided at the end into strips, formerly used to punish children: "Solider Aristotle played the taws/Upon the bottom of a king of kings” ( William Butler Yeats). (noun-plural)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Their heads were not the heads of geese but of women artificially painted and with so-called taws, or marbles, for their eyes."
• "The master's "taws" were a wholesome deterrent of persistent or mistaken trapping; and, in addition, the trapped boys sometimes rectified matters at the back of the school at the play-hour, when fists became a high court of appeal and review."
• "Plz tew nawt punt, kik, hit wif sportz ekqipmint, frow, pich, taws, or udurwaiz treet liek regulur bawl."