Definition of "swipple"
swipple
noun
plural swipples
The part of a flail that is free to swing, and which strikes the grain in threshing.
Quotations
As showing the local influence of the tool, one may refer to the custom in Yorkshire by which a girl, on being proposed to, took a piece of straw and broke it into two lengths (long and short), typifying the handstaff and swipple of the flail. If she gave the former to her lover, she accepted him: but if she tendered the shorter piece, "she gave him 't swipple end," or rejected him.
1907, Notes and Queries, Oxford University Press, page 317