stripe

noun

1. A long region of a single colour in a repeating pattern of similar regions.

   “zebra stripes”

2. A long, relatively straight region against a different coloured background.

   “8 Sep 2019, Peter Conrad in The Guardian, Sontag: Her Life by Benjamin Moser review – heavyweight study of a critical colossus At first, what mattered was the sparky contents of Sontag’s head; by the end she was best known for the way she wore her hair – that saturnine battle helmet of dyed black, with a single stripe left white at the temple like a Frankensteinian lightning bolt of intellect.”

3. (in-plural)The badge worn by certain officers in the military or other forces.
4. (informal)Distinguishing characteristic; sign; likeness; sort.

   “persons of the same political stripe”

   “a tyrant of a very different stripe”

5. A long, narrow mark left by striking someone with a whip or stick; a blow or lash with a whip, stick, or scourge.

   “Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness!”

   “Forty stripes he [the judge] may give him [the wicked man], and not exceed:”

   “1735, James Thomson, The Four Seasons, and Other Poems, London: J. Millan and A. Millar, “Winter,” lines 353-354, p. 21, [Tyrants] at pleasure mark’d him with inglorious stripes;”

   “Stones to eat and bitter water for their thirst, and stripes for tender nurture.”

   “A certain Abbé Chuppe d'Auteroche [...] asserted that in Russia, the vapor baths, stripes were administered to the frequenters as a stimulus to the venereal appetite.”

6. A slash cut into the flesh as a punishment.

   “But if there were any one who tried and could not make her laugh, he would have three red stripes cut out of his back and salt rubbed into them and, sad to relate, there were many sore backs in that kingdom.”

   “[At the Saturnalia] not even a word of reproof would be administered to him [a slave] for conduct which at any other season might have been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death.”

7. A pattern produced by arranging the warp threads in sets of alternating colours, or in sets presenting some other contrast of appearance.
8. Any of the balls marked with stripes in the game of pool, which one player aims to pot, the other player taking the spots.
9. A portion of data distributed across several separate physical disks for the sake of redundancy.
10. (slang)The start/finish line.

verb

1. (transitive)To mark with stripes.
2. (transitive)To lash with a whip or strap.

   “I did try to ask questions and talk to Nanny but different things but that was considered "Talking back" or sassing which resulted in the striping of the legs or mashing of one's mouth, and then being put in the dark closet until the crying stopped.”

   “But when practice yielded no improvement, curses and the crack of a whip followed. Stripped, lying face down on the ground, Platt absorbed the master's rage, lash after lash striping his buttocks, shoulders, and back.”

3. (transitive)To distribute data across several separate physical disks to reduce the time to read and write.