A spanking paddle is a wooden instrument with a long, flat face and narrow neck, existing in various sizes and dimensions, used to administer corporal punishment, including erotic spanking for fetish and BDSM sexual purposes. The paddle spanking is administered to the buttocks, and is especially popular in North America. It is rarely found in the rest of the English-speaking world, where the same purpose is typically served by a rattan cane.

The word is also used as a verb (to paddle), so that a punishment administered with the paddle is called a paddling.

A spanking paddle can sometimes be called a shingle.

Confusingly, non-wooden flat devices, such as thick leather straps, are sometimes called paddles, as with the pre-1972 Canadian prison strap.

Various terms exist for a paddling, such as giving wood, the woodshed treatment (from the rural tradition that such punishments were administered away from the main building), a (hide-)tanning, medicine, therapy, etc., and even incorrect terms that strictly speaking refer to a different implement of punishment, such as a whipping; it is also possible to specify the anatomical target, e.g. ass-whupping or arse-whipping. At St. Augustine High School (New Orleans), receiving a paddling is known as "getting the board". The head of a boys' reformatory has described paddling an inmate as "boarding his butt". In most ordinary schools, however, strokes of the paddle are known as "licks" or "swats" or "pops", and being paddled is typically described as "getting licks" or "getting swats".

In some countries such as the United States, Canada and the Philippines, paddling is used in college fraternities and sororities as a form of hazing, though nowadays it is likely to be merely a symbolic, decorative gift to a "little brother/little sister" from his or her mentor, rather than used for serious punishment.

Paddles are often made from (expensive but durable) hardwood, such as maple, oak, mahogany or walnut, and finished with varnish or teak oil; plastic causes less pain due to lower density, though some modern paddles are made of Lexan. Fiberglass is regarded as being too likely to break.

Paddles may be home-made or home-modified objects, e.g. a shortened canoe paddle or baseball bat with one side flatted to half or less, as once used on cadets in Columbia Military Academy; especially in domestic discipline, various substitutes might be used, including the kitchen utensil cutting board (wooden and paddle-shaped) or the table tennis bat. In secondary schools, punishment paddles are traditionally manufactured as an exercise in shop class and then given to a favorite teacher.

As a paddle is flat and inflexible, unlike a cane or whip, it is too blunt to cause stripes or weals, but it can cause bruising.

Generally the physical impact is therefore not greatly increased, only the embarrassment, if administered "pants down", except in the case of the holed paddle (the original, oblong model was known as a Spencer paddle), which causes the recipient to blister much faster (these holes may be beveled to reduce the chances of blistering).

Furthermore a long model (including the handle) increases the leverage and hence the force applied. While a wide blade may look frightening, it spreads the force over a larger surface, and so with equal weight it would hit less intensely. A narrower shape will concentrate all the force of the blows on a smaller area, causing more intense pain and worse bruising.

As there is quite a market for paddles for erotic spanking purposes in the United States, there are companies which manufacture and market them, often in combination with other items (disciplinarian or not), for fraternity/sorority, home, school and "fun" use, but most of the names these use are rather arbitrary. There are also novelty shops that sell paddles (small and large); these are often decorated with humorous motifs and instructions such as "Applying the Board of Education to the Seat of Learning," "Heat for the Seat," "How to Paddle Your Wife" and "Frontier Tail-blazer."

Somewhat similar, though usually not called a paddle, can be the wooden 'sword' (often bamboo and usually flattened; otherwise it is rather a cane) used for corporal discipline, mainly on the buttocks, but also sometimes on the hands, in the Far East, such as the shinai or kendo sword normally used for martial arts, once (or possibly still) used in some private 'after hours' Japanese schools. A similar implement is routinely used today for school corporal punishment in South Korea.

Hitting children at all in any manner, or hitting them with objects is expressly illegal or a criminal offence in some countries.

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