Mauling

[mawl] /mɔl/

noun
1.
a heavy hammer, as for driving stakes or wedges.
2.
Archaic. a heavy club or mace.
verb (used with object)
3.
to handle or use roughly:
The book was badly mauled by its borrowers.
4.
to injure by a rough beating, shoving, or the like; bruise:
to be mauled by an angry crowd.
5.
to split with a maul and wedge, as a wooden rail.
/mɔːl/
verb (transitive)
1.
to handle clumsily; paw
2.
to batter or lacerate
noun
3.
a heavy two-handed hammer suitable for driving piles, wedges, etc
4.
(rugby) a loose scrum that forms around a player who is holding the ball and on his feet
v.

mid-13c., meallen “strike with a heavy weapon,” from Middle English mealle (mid-13c.) “mace, wooden club, heavy hammer” (see maul (n.). The meaning “damage seriously, mangle” is first recorded 1690s. Related: Mauled; mauling.
n.

c.1200, mealle, “hammer, usually a heavy one; sledgehammer,” from Old French mail “hammer,” from Latin malleus “hammer” (see mallet).

an old name for a mallet, the rendering of the Hebrew mephits (Prov. 25:18), properly a war-club.