I don’t have any unusual term for a caning as a whole to relay, but at my secondary school in the 1950s cane strokes were referred to by those in receipt of them as ‘beats’, for instance ‘I got three beats’ might be heard from someone who fell foul of the Prefects, or ‘The Duke gave me six beats’ from someone unfortunate enough to seriously displease the Headmaster. Three strokes of the cane was the maximum the Prefects could administer, six was the most I heard of the Headmaster administering. He caned relatively infrequently.
Old-Fashioned Terms for a Caning2
