[tahr] 
,noun, verb, tarred, tar⋅ring, adjective | 1. | any of various dark-colored viscid products obtained by the destructive distillation of certain organic substances, as coal or wood. |
| 2. | coal-tar pitch. |
| 3. | smoke solids or components: cigarette tar. |
| 4. | to smear or cover with or as if with tar. |
| 5. | of or characteristic of tar. |
| 6. | covered or smeared with tar; tarred. |
| 7. | beat, knock, or whale the tar out of, Informal. to beat mercilessly: The thief had knocked the tar out of the old man and left him for dead. |
| 8. | tar and feather,
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| 9. | tarred with the same brush, possessing the same shortcomings or guilty of the same misdeeds: The whole family is tarred with the same brush. |
| tar 1 (tär) n.
To coat with or as if with tar. [Middle English, from Old English teru; see deru- in Indo-European roots.] |
tar (tär) Pronunciation Key
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tar and feather jargon
(A sick contrivance from the Unix tar command and the Ku Klux Klan torture method) To create a transportable archive from a group of files by first sticking them together with tar (the Tape ARchiver) and then compressing the result. The latter action is dubbed "feathering" (purely for contrived effect) by analogy to what you do with an aeroplane propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily.
[The Jargon File]
(1997-05-26)
tar and feather
Criticize severely, punish, as in The traditionalists often want to tar and feather those who don't conform. This expression alludes to a former brutal punishment in which a person was smeared with tar and covered with feathers, which then stuck. It was first used as a punishment for theft in the English navy, recorded in the Ordinance of Richard I in 1189, and by the mid-1700s had become mob practice. The figurative usage dates from the mid-1800s.