tar

beat (or whale) the tar out of beat or thrash severely. North American informal

spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar: seespoil.

tar and feather smear with tar and then cover with feathers as a punishment.

☞ This practice was introduced in Britain in 1189, when Richard I decreed that it should be the punishment for members of the navy found guilty of theft. It seems to have been intermittently imposed on other wrongdoers in Britain and has sometimes been inflicted on an unpopular or scandalous individual by a mob.

1981Anthony PriceSoldier No More The Russians…wouldn't have cared less if we'd tarred and feathered Nasser and run him out of Suez on a rail.

tar baby a difficult problem which is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.

☞ The allusion is to a doll smeared with tar as a trap for Brer Rabbit in Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus (1881).

tar people with the same brush consider specified people to have the same faults.