chicotter

Regionally variable and historically loaded: in francophone Africa it refers to flogging someone with a chicote (a rawhide whip historically used, including under colonial punishment regimes), while in Québécois French it's essentially a spelling variant of chicoter (to nag, worry). In the Charentes region of France it can mean to skin or flay.

• Sous le régime colonial, on chicottait les ouvriers pour un retard. — Under the colonial regime, workers were flogged with a chicote for being late.
• Ce vieux souvenir douloureux le chicotte encore. — That painful old memory still nags at him.
• Le boucher chicotte le lapin avant de le préparer. — The butcher skins the rabbit before preparing it.

Don't use this word without awareness of its history — in a francophone African context it directly evokes colonial-era corporal punishment, not a light or joking sense; the meaning shifts sharply by region, so check context before assuming which sense is meant.