Stockfish

I will beat thee like a stockfish. Moffet and Bennet, in their Health’s Improvement (p. 262), inform us that dried cod, till it is beaten, is called buckhorn, because it is so tough; but after it has been beaten on the stock, it is termed stockfish. (In French, etriller quelquʹun, a double carillon, “to a pretty tune.”)

“Peace! thou wilt be beaten like a stockfish else.”—Jonson: Every Man in his Humour, iii. 2.