Emily Dickinson Lexicon

POM'MEL, v.t. [from the noun.]

To beat as with a pommel, that is, with something thick or bulky; to bruise. [The French se pommeler, to grow dapple, to curdle, is from the same source; but the sense is to make knobs or lumps, and hence to variegate, or make spots like knobs. The Welsh have from the same root, or pwmp, a mass, pwmpiaw, to form a round mass, and to thump, to bang, Eng. to bump.]