A spanking paddle is a usually wooden instrument with a wide, flat face and narrow neck, so called because it is roughly shaped like the homonymous piece of sports equipment, but existing in more varied sizes and dimensions, used to administer a spanking to the buttocks; it would be too hard and heavy to use safely on the back.
# A spanking paddle can sometimes be called shingle, apparently after its form, or be given names (rather like weapons in military and police units), especially when used in an organisation, that allude to its hot effect on the paddled posterior, such as ass-burner, butt-buster. Educators and children in households where a paddle is used for discipline sometimes award the paddle such nicknames also, such as “Lola’s bane” and “Mother’s little helper.” (Confusingly, sometimes non-wooden flat devices, such as straps, are wrongly called paddles, even in official institutions.)
# For a paddling various terms exist, some referring to wood, the usual material, such as giving wood, the woodshed treatment [from the old tradition that such punishments were administered in the woodshed], or more general term for spanking, for corporal punishment or for discipline such as punishment, a lesson, (rightly) deserved, (hide-)tanning, medicine, therapy, etc., and even incorrect terms that strictly speaking refer to a different method of corporal punishment, such as a whipping; it is also possible to specify the anatomical target (thus indirectly affirming it is a form of spanking), e.g. arse whupping.
