CASTIGATION, among the Romans, the punishment of an offender by blows, or beating with a wand or switch. Castigation was chiefly a military punishment, the power of inflicting which on the soldiery was given to the tribunes. Some make it consist of two kinds; one with a stick or cane, called fastigatio; and the other with rods, called flagellatio. The latter was the more dishonourable.
CASTIGATORY for SCOLDS. A woman indicted for being a common scold, if convicted, shall be placed in a certain engine of correction, called the trebucket castigatory, or cucking stool, which in the Saxon language signifies the scolding stool; though now it is frequently corrupted into the ducking stool, because the residue of the judgment is, that when she is placed therein, she shall be plunged in water for her punishment.