belabour

They, mistaking the frantic cries of Mynheer Isaac for demonstrations of joy, began to belabour him with kicks and cuffs, such as could not have been administered in better style by any prize-fighter on the other side of the Channel.

One of the muleteers in attendance, who could not have had much good nature in him, hearing the poor prostrate man blustering in this style, was unable to refrain from giving him an answer on his ribs; and coming up to him he seized his lance, and having broken it in pieces, with one of them he began so to belabour our Don Quixote that, notwithstanding and in spite of his armour, he milled him like a measure of wheat.

"See what lengths you can drive a desperate man to!" He may hit me on the head and they may belabour me from behind.

To confess the truth, I am afraid Mr Jones was one of these; for though he was attacked and violently belaboured with the aforesaid weapon, he could not be provoked to make any resistance; but in a most cowardly manner applied, with many entreaties, to his antagonist to desist from pursuing her blows; in plain English, he only begged her with the utmost earnestness to hear him; but before he could obtain his request, my landlord himself entered into the fray, and embraced that side of the cause which seemed to stand very little in need of assistance.

While Ned Land, clinging to the bows, belaboured the gigantic animal with blows from his harpoon, the creature's teeth were buried in the gunwale, and it lifted the whole thing out of the water, as a lion does a roebuck.

One day I was frolicking with a little spirited urchin, some six years old, who chased me with a piece of bamboo about three feet long, with which he occasionally belaboured me.

NOTTINGHAM: 1.45 Implicit, 2.20 Team Decision, 2.55 Whitehall, 3.30 MAID TO REMEMBER (NAP), 4.05 Elysian Flyer, 4.40 Spot Lite, 5.15 Belabour.

4.10 STREET SENSATION 5.45 CRYSTAL DEAUVILLE HISAR 6.15 THE HOODED CLAW PULSATING 6.45 WARBA CORONATION DAY 7.15 TROPICS Raashdy 7.45 BELABOUR ANDOK 8.15 RAINBOW REBEL SWORD EXCEED 8.45 SWORD EXCEED PEACE TERMS 9.15 KINGOFMERROWS TOTEPOOL SILVER TROPHY HANDICAP 3) (1) 2m 3f 100yds Winner PS28,475 (1 47-OLD GuArD (168) P Nicholls 6 11-12...................2 F6-ALAry (212) C Tizzard 7 11-8..................

I will not belabour the details of this very unfortunate tragedy.

On St David's Day, one of your national emblems became in grave danger from that lowly vegetable, the dreaded brussels sprout, where highly-paid bureaucrats have nothing better to do than dream up the next set of regulations with which to belabour you (and us).