modelling, verbal noun
- Origin:
- EnglishShow more Transferred use of general English modelling the action of working as a model in order to display clothes.
slang
In urban (especially township) English: the parading of an offender, naked through a public place, as a form of punishment. Also attributive.
1990 K. Mkhize in M. Kentridge Unofficial War 69Comrades have banned smoking in buses...The new system of punishment is ‘modelling’. This is where a person is stripped naked and forced to parade, confessing his or her offence. There are heated arguments about ‘modelling’. Some elders are strongly for it. They say it has helped clean up crime...Defenders of modelling admit it is humiliating but say it is better than the necklace...Inkatha officials have told me that modelling is bringing them new supporters. They say Inkatha is being asked to stop the amaqabane’s immoral punishment.
1994 R.W. Johnson in London Review of Books (U.K.) 6 Jan. 10In addition, this being ANC territory, both sides operated ‘people’s courts’, dispensing summary justice — sometimes death, but more usually whippings or ‘modelling’, in which the guilty party has to strip naked and walk through the camp amid a crowd of jeering onlookers.
the parading of an offender, naked through a public place, as a form of punishment. Also attributive.
- Derivatives:
- Hence model transitive and intransitive verb, to (force one to) undergo the punishment of ‘modelling’.1990 K. Mkhize in M. Kentridge Unofficial War 69A comrade argues: ‘Modelling the offender acts as a rehabilitating exercise to deter crime.’1990 M. Ndwandwe in Tribute Sept. 65A journalist from a Durban-based alternative weekly, The New African, dared to write about these apparent injustices and had to face the music. Attempts to get him to ‘model’ were subsequently abandoned.
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