beat hollow

• beat all hollow

beat hollow (third-person singular simple present beats hollow, present participle beating hollow, simple past beat hollow, past participle beaten hollow or (colloquial) beat hollow)

1. (transitive) To beat up (a person) severely.
2. (transitive, figurative) To defeat severely.
   • 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Complete Poems, University of Illinois Press, published 2000, page 351:

     "The Raven" has had a great run ... but I wrote it for the express purpose of running — just as I did "The Gold-Bug" ... the bird beat the bug, though, all hollow.

   • 1881, Charles Darwin, “letter”, in Darwin Correspondence Database‎, retrieved 2013-07-07:

     The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turks hollow in the struggle for existence.

   • 1915, John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps, William Blackwood & Sons, page 9:

     […] and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow.

• beat to a pulp