Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Cudgel   Listen
verb
Cudgel  v. t.  (past & past part. cudgeled or cudgelled; pres. part. cudgeling or cudgelling)  To beat with a cudgel. "An he here, I would cudgel him like a dog."
To cudgel one's brains, to exercise one's wits.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Cudgel" Quotes from Famous Books



... out of any malice or any soreness about me, but that those of my kindred into whose hands it please God these papers do fall hereafter, may bear up stoutly in such straits; and if they be good at the cudgel, that they, looking first at their man, do give it him heartily and unsparingly, keeping ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... frequently happens that a woman marries two husbands." And these women are anything but feminine and lovable. One of the champions of the Hottentots, Theophilus Hahn, says (Globus, XII., 304) of the Namaqua women that they love to torture their slaves: "When they cudgel a slave one can easily read in their faces the infernal joy it gives them to witness the tortures of their victims." He often saw women belaboring the naked back of a slave with branches of the cruel acacia delinens, and finally rub salt or ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... secret in telling that truth, which Blyth must have ordered her to keep? Why keep it? Was this mysterious Hair Bracelet mixed up somehow with the grand secret about Madonna's past history, which Valentine had always kept from him and from everybody? Very likely it was—but why cudgel his brains about what didn't concern him? Was it not—considering the fact, previously forgotten, that he had but fifteen shillings and threepence of disposable money in the world—rather lucky than otherwise that Mrs. Peckover had taken it into her head to stop him from buying what he ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... but my brother, whom in the excitement of the moment we had quite forgotten, now appeared upon the scene in rather a dazed condition, and, hearing the altercation going on, advanced within striking distance of the waggoner. I could see by the way he held his cudgel that he meant mischief if the course of events had rendered it necessary, but the blood on the waggoner's face showed he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... in England and in France, there has been a growing sentiment that the government's policy of silence has been a mistake. The cudgel of public opinion is a heavy one. The German propaganda in America has gone on steadily. There is no argument where one side only is presented. That splendid and solid part of the American people, the German ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... beggar agreed to the bargain, and Wallace was left with the cloak, which he threw over his shoulders, and which covered him from head to foot. Pulling his cap well over his eyes, and choosing a trusty thorn cudgel from a neighbouring thicket, he went limping up to the door of the little inn, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... make parsons of now, I hear. My boy, to do anything really in that line, a man ought to have notions different from mine—rather. Why don't you advise me to set up a kindergarten? That would suit as well as chronicling ecclesiastical small beer. Cudgel your brains, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... drew near to the place where Charles awaited him, he saw the Prince approaching him with a short thick cudgel (not a very feminine appendage) in his hand. "Are you," cried Charles, "Mr. Macdonald of Kingsburgh?" "Yes, sir," replied Kingsburgh. "Then," said Charles, "all is well; come let us be going." Macdonald, however, first begged the Prince to partake of some refreshment, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... taking their turns as sentries, at this juncture, were Woodburn and Bart, who, with each a stout cane or cudgel in his hand, were now ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... rural, with laws, with codes, with customs; ground to the earth with imposts, with fines, with quit-rents, with mortmains, import and export duties, rents, tithes, tolls, statute-labour, and bankruptcies; cudgelled with a cudgel called a sceptre; gasping, sweating, groaning, always marching, crowned, but on their knees, rather a beast of burthen than a nation,—the French people suddenly stood upright, determined to be men, and resolved to demand an account of Providence, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... my mouth prevented me from uttering any sound. It was at this instant that my unfortunate husband entered the room. He had evidently heard some suspicious sounds, and he came prepared for such a scene as he found. He was dressed in his shirt and trousers, with his favourite blackthorn cudgel in his hand. He rushed at one of the burglars, but another—it was the elderly man—stooped, picked the poker out of the grate, and struck him a horrible blow as he passed. He fell without a groan, and never moved again. I fainted once ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Drayton, and, determined to cudgel his brains no longer, he reached for the brandy and drank another half glass. There was then ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... Cudgel your brains for the answer. We don't want any mixed-anatomy Sphinxes rampaging around here," ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... a well-made fellow, and of a handsome person, as well as great strength and dexterity, which he had often exercised in wrestling and cudgel-playing which gained him great praise amongst the country fellows at wakes and fairs, where such prizes are usually given. Therefore giving himself up almost wholly to such exercises, he used frequently to run away from his parents, and lie about the country, stealing ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... Duke of Buckingham. It was for this satire, the joint composition of Dryden and Sheffield, that Rochester hired bravoes to cudgel Dryden.] ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... received the most blows, for he offered the most resistance. He looked terrible, as he walked. He roared without knowing it. Boys caught hold of him, and he dragged them long distances. Once he stopped and flung off the crowd in the street. Just as he was about to escape, a blow from a cudgel fell on his head and knocked him down. He rose up again, half stunned, and staggered on, blows raining upon him, and the boys hanging like leeches to his arms ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... he holds a cudgel, which he snatched from the street as he arose. It is the spoke of a wheel belonging to some light vehicle, and which no doubt ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... States in the Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from the general memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of Webster's "Seventh of March speech" it is more than likely that nine out of ten Americans will have to cudgel their wits endeavoring to make quite sure just where among our political adventures that famous oration fits in. How many of us could pass a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of events—the introduction in Congress ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster

... magistrate. They struck me to be a lazy, indolent, and harmless race of human beings; and they formed, in all their habits, a striking contrast with their enslaved brethren. Whilst the latter devote their spare hours to the culture of their own little spots, to cudgel-playing, dancing, or other gambols, the former appear to spend their whole time in a state between sleeping and waking, at the doors of their huts, or under the shelter of trees. Some of the Maroon females, I observed, were really handsome, their features being high, and their ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... I right soon," quoth Robin. "Stay you here a little while, till I cut me a cudgel like unto that you have been twiddling in your fingers." So saying he sought his own bank again with a leap, laid aside his long bow and arrows, and cut him a stout staff of oak, straight, knotless, and a good six feet in length. But still it was a full foot shorter than his opponent's. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... his tongue as throstle's note, Quick in dance as thought can be; Deft his tabor, cudgel stout; O, he lies by the willow-tree! My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, All ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... Tenderly and had Suckled him, was that something which was departed: and from it proceeded all those Actions by which she shew'd her Care of him, and Affection, to him, and not from this unactive Body; but that the Body was to it only as an Instrument or Tool, like his Cudgel which he had made for himself, with which he used to Fight with the Wild Beasts. So that now, all his regard to the Body was remov'd, and transferr'd to that by which the Body is governed, and by whose Power it moves. ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... right, but after what we've done with the food laws and stopping the sale of cigarettes to boys, and so on, people are looking at us as a switch to chastise the city. But we don't want them to look at us as a cudgel. And this state law you've got in mind hits too ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... integrity. I could have staked my life that she was clear of blame, and, though all was dark at the present, that the explanation of the mystery would show her part in these events to be both right and needful. It was true, let me cudgel my imagination as I pleased, that I could invent no theory of her relations to Northmour; but I felt none the less sure of my conclusion because it was founded on instinct in place of reason, and, as I may say, went to sleep that night with the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... evinced every symptom of one in a state of intoxication. Brandishing a stout cudgel over his head, and pealing forth shouts of defiance, he rolled from side to side on his spirited charger, like some labouring bark careening to the violence of the winds, but ever, like that bark, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... Geoffrey before he heard the sound of a footstep in the loft beside him. He grasped his cudgel firmly and leaned slightly forward. For ten minutes there was quiet within, and Geoffrey guessed that the traitor was writing the missive he was about to send to the enemy; then the footstep approached the window, and ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... as to money gives— broke forth in him, fresh as he was from a brutal interview with the financial clique whom he had given the chance to make much money, and who were now, for a few thousand dollars, trying to cudgel him out of his one opportunity to regain his place ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... himself quite unable to form a workable hypothesis. Was the person who had been seen running away concerned in the matter?—if it was a person. If so, was he the author of the footprints? Of course the ex-lawyer's clerk had something to do with it, but what? In vain did Geoffrey cudgel his brains; every idea that occurred to him ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... saddle. And to get the barrels of their pistols narrow they pierce the metal which they intend to convert into arms. Further, every cavalry soldier has a sword and a dagger. But the rest, who form the light-armed troops, carry a metal cudgel. For if the foe cannot pierce their metal for pistols and cannot make swords, they attack him with clubs, shatter and overthrow him. Two chains of six spans length hang from the club, and at the end of these are iron balls, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... had thoughtlessly forgotten to apprise of his design, burst forth from behind the door, highly delighted at finding that the opportunity which was to bring him in the promised reward had at last come, and began to cudgel the musicians most unmercifully, with the results of which we are already acquainted. Of course there was no further mention made of either Splendiano or Pitichinaccio's accompanying Signor Pasquale to Nicolo's theatre, for ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... attack those of another, and desperate fights ensue, the killed and wounded being afterwards eaten by the victors. It is, therefore, unsafe to venture out in the streets of Teheran after dark without a lantern and good stout cudgel. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... fiercely through the gloom. Harding, Gideon Spilett, Herbert, Pencroft and Neb posted themselves in impregnable line. Top, his formidable jaws open, preceded the colonists, and he was followed by Jup, armed with knotty cudgel, which he brandished ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... letter r with too much force."—Ib. "Flipp, a mixed liquor, consisting of beer and spirits sweetened."—Ib. "Glynn, a hollow between two mountains, a glen."—Churchill's Grammar, p. 22. "Lamm, to beat soundly with a cudgel or bludgeon."—Walker's Dict. "Bunn, a small cake, a simnel, a kind of sweet bread."—See ib. "Brunett, a woman with a brown complexion."—Ib. and Johnson's Dict. "Wad'sett, an ancient tenure or lease of land in the Highlands of Scotland."—Webster's Dict. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... darkened, or ever St. Wilfrid came, Low on the borders of Britain (the ancient poets sing) Between the Cliff and the Forest there ruled a Saxon King. Stubborn all were his people from cottar to overlord— Not to be cowed by the cudgel, scarce to be schooled by the sword; Quick to turn at their pleasure, cruel to cross in their mood, And set on paths of their choosing as the hogs of Andred's Wood. Laws they made in the Witan—the laws of flaying and fine— Common, loppage and pannage, the theft and the track of kine— ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... we may observe, that it is impossible for men so much as to murder each other without statutes, and maxims, and an idea of justice and honour. War has its laws as well as peace; and even that sportive kind of war, carried on among wrestlers, boxers, cudgel-players, gladiators, is regulated by fixed principles. Common interest and utility beget infallibly a standard of right and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... so it seemed, sprung up threatening to devour us all. However, a comely woman came out of the house and it was explained to the satisfaction of all, especially to a persistent cur, by a vigorous whack on the head with a cudgel, that our visit was a friendly one; then all was again peaceful and quiet. The good man was in the field close by, but soon came home accompanied by his two stalwart sons each "toting" a sack of corn. We found the Andersons—this ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... a sudden commotion in the direction of the disputants, and Tarzan rolled his head in their direction in time to see the burly brute of a priest leap upon the woman opposite him, dashing out her brains with a single blow of his heavy cudgel. Then that happened which Tarzan had witnessed a hundred times before among the wild denizens of his own savage jungle. He had seen the thing fall upon Kerchak, and Tublat, and Terkoz; upon a dozen of the other mighty bull apes of his tribe; and upon ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a vigorous, fatfeatured, choleric, whitehaired and bearded elder, rushes in, cudgel in hand, with an overwhelming retinue, and silences Osman with a sounding thwack. In a moment the back of the room is crowded with his followers. The Sheikh retreats a little towards his men; and the Cadi comes impetuously forward ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... tongue as the throstle's note; Quick in dance as thought can be; Deft his tabor, cudgel stout; O, lie lies by the willow-tree! My love is ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... for my grandfather's house, where we were saluted by Jowler and Caesar, whom my cousin, young master, had let loose at our approach. Being well acquainted with the inveteracy of these curs, I was about to betake myself to my heels, when my uncle seized me with one hand, brandished his cudgel with the other, and at one blow laid Caesar sprawling on the ground; but, finding himself attacked at the same time in the rear by Jowler, and fearing Caesar might recover, he drew his hanger, wheeled about, and by a lucky stroke severed Jowler's head from his body. By this time, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... by saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an explanation—that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps—— Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. What business ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... the roseate heavens comes the vibrant note of a bell; whereupon, the hubbub ceases and at the same moment a young Cossack with a face studded with freckles, and, in his hands, a cudgel, makes ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... the man Tom. "Gi'e him one for 'is nob, Jimmy." But as his nearer captor raised his cudgel, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... apprehension of a whip cracked in passing over the assembled heads of a pseudocritical and mock-historic society. In either case we moderns at least might haply desire the intervention of a beadle's hand as heavy and a sceptral cudgel as knotty as ever the son of Laertes applied to the shoulders of the first of the type or the tribe of Thersites. For this brutal and brutish buffoon—I am speaking of Shakespeare's Thersites—has no touch of humour in all his currish composition: Shakespeare ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... very well now, but you should see it in winter," retorted Kate. "Great, bare, snake-like things all over the—now, don't cudgel your brains to bring 'plates' or 'crumbs' into that!" she broke ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... Berlin, boy; fine uniforms, good beer, and tobacco. Come, you will love me like your father!' he yelled at the tallest gardener, bestowing a heavy blow on the youth's shoulders with the stout cudgel which he always carried. The end of it was that Eberhard Ludwig made him a present of the Landhofmeisterin's gardeners, and the King in high good humour retired to take an hour's nap before starting to enjoy some wild-boar sticking in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... crackled, the room was swept and garnished—he flattered himself that the report on his habitat would be a favourable one. Ned's appearance gave him a pleasant shock: it was just as if Polly herself, translated into male terms, stood before him. No need, now, to cudgel his brains for her image! In looking at Ned, he looked again at Polly. The wide-awake off, the same fine, soft, black hair came to light—here, worn rather long and curly—the same glittering black eyes, ivory-white skin, short, straight ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... exercise of a Tartar or Arab, prepares him sufficiently for war. Running, wrestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the javelin, drawing the bow, etc. are the common pastimes of those who live in the open air, and are all of them the images of war. When a Tartar or Arab actually goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds and flocks, which he carries with him, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... sounds which we had heard. He was an aged man, clad in seafaring garb, with an old pea-jacket buttoned up to his throat. His back was bowed, his knees were shaky, and his breathing was painfully asthmatic. As he leaned upon a thick oaken cudgel his shoulders heaved in the effort to draw the air into his lungs. He had a colored scarf round his chin, and I could see little of his face save a pair of keen dark eyes, overhung by bushy white brows, and long gray side-whiskers. ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Thou, soldier, be a merchant; merchant, thou A soldier be; and lawyer to the plough. Change all your stations straight. Why do they stay? The devil a man will change now when he may. Were I in General Jove's abused case, By Jove, I'd cudgel this rebellious race; But he's too good; be all, then, as you were; However, make the best of what you are, And in that state be cheerful and rejoice, Which either was your fate or was your choice. No; they must labour yet, and sweat and toil, And very miserable be awhile. But 'tis ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... and followed by his setters, with his gun under his arm, away went Harry; and catching up our pieces likewise, we followed, nothing loth, Tim bringing up the rear with the two spaniels fretting in their couples, and a huge black thorn cudgel, which he had brought, as he informed me, "all ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... to the roof of a building, and, frisking about there, broke in the tiling. The owner went up after him, and quickly drove him down, beating him severely with a thick wooden cudgel. The Ass said: "Why, I saw the Monkey do this very thing yesterday, and you all laughed heartily, as if it afforded you very ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... "Pistol's alive,") Falstaff, Justice Shallow, and many other characters of Shakspeare. On the other, the manager bearing in his hand a paper, on which is written, "it cost 6000l." a scene-painter, who has laid his brushes aside, and taken up a cudgel; and a woman holding an ensign, bearing the words, "We'll starve 'em out." In the corner is a man, quiet and snug, hugging a bag of money, laughing at the folly of the rest; and behind, a monkey, perched upon a sign iron, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... still whenever he thus got a respite for a few days he was again at work. It was in such an interval that he wrote his paper condemning the liberty, which was becoming the license, of the press. If the law permitted this sort of thing, he said, then it should restore also the liberty of the cudgel. The paper is not altogether antiquated, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... which several amateurs will be present, and during which they will play the Small-Sword, Cut-and-Thrust, Broad-Sword, and Cudgel or Cane Fighting; to close with a Duel between Messrs. T. & G., who will at first fight with Sabres, and afterwards with Small-Swords, until one of the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into the woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an interval trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last, each with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all standing in the same casual way upon ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... whole world of that old England—the maids of the Inn, the parish clerk, the two sportsmen, the hosts of the taverns, the beaux, the starveling authors—all alive; all (save the authors) full of beef and beer; a cudgel in every fist, every man ready for a brotherly bout at fisticuffs. What has become of it, the lusty old militant world? What will become of us, and why do we prefer to Fielding—a number of meritorious moderns? Who knows? But do not let us prefer anything to ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... Countess had now again quite superseded the pretty counterpart of La Valliee, who was before me. I would have given a great deal to hear, in solemn earnest, that she did remember the champion who, for her sake, had thrown himself before the saber of an enraged dragoon, with only a cudgel in ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... the cudgel-stroke of Johnson and the mud-throwing of Carlyle, America had grown strong enough to bear the assaults of literary bullies and mountebanks without serious annoyance. The question which had been so superciliously asked was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... requires assistance from the voice and manner. Some words refer especially to literature, and never to any attacks made on present company. Of these, satire aims at making a man odious or ridiculous; lampoon, contemptible. Satire is the rapier; lampoon the broadsword, or even the cudgel—the former points to the heart and wounds sharply, the latter deals a dull and blundering blow, often falling wide of the mark. In general a different man selects a different weapon; the educated and refined ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... when the mob is effectually suppressed, and as much his duty not to allow himself to be surprised and over-mastered by a pretended and hollow submission for the sake of seizing an advantage, as it is to inflict effectual blows of his cudgel while the row is in its more flagrant stages of development. The United States, having interfered by force to suppress a national riot, has a clear right, and a bounden duty, not to abandon the region of the disturbance until the animus of rebellion is subdued ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... imbued with a determination that nothing could shake. Jack's reasoning never once came into my mind. I took down the knapsack that hung on a nail ready packed for the intended fishing expedition of the morrow. I buckled it on; put on my thickest shoes, and, seizing a stout cudgel, issued softly from my apartment, and tapped gently ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... intent I straightway armed myself, My oaken cudgel drew to chase the elf; When lo! the elf felt not the slightest stroke, But in return the tendrils of ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... yard or so in front of the negro. And now the fugitive saw the Bahaman's supposed cudgel was an iron crowbar which he wielded as easily as a wand. The negro leaped and at the same time struck. But, by some queer chance, the conch, a yard ahead of him, lost his own footing in the shifty sand just then ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... stood in the doorway, his lanthorn dangling in his hand, his cudgel stuck through his belt, his shock of hair rough like an old thatch, and his eyes upon the ground. He mumbled, feeling ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... long play; one that goes to a play, to a whore, to his bed, in circle: good for nothing in the world but to sweat nightcaps and foul fair lawn shirts, feed a few foggy servingmen, and prefer dunces to livings—this old Sir Raderic, Furor, it shall be thy task to cudgel with thy thick, thwart terms; marry, at the first, give him some sugarcandy terms,[103] and then, if he will not untie purse-strings of his liberality, sting him with terms laid in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... the bushes at the dark edge of the swamp road, with eyes that watched every glitter of the coins, and a hand that grasped a heavy cudgel of blackthorn, a man whose close-cropped hair and hard lined face belonged nowhere but within the ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... upon their interlacing surfaces cheerfully suggested the coming of spring. Three famished peasants sat on the bench. The bones protruded on their hollow faces, and their eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. They were all over fifty; one was much older, and leaned feebly on a cudgel. Their dress was mean and patched; their battered sabots stuffed with straw and wool. One was whittling with a curved knife. He was ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... came one night to get a dainty morsel. But Sultan had told his master what the wolf meant to do; so he laid wait for him behind the barn door, and when the wolf was busy looking out for a good fat sheep, he had a stout cudgel laid about his back, that combed his locks ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... must expiate his offence against the Countess de Soissons, by removing that heap of stones, which were cast by his command against my palace-doors. If he prove intractable, bring him to his senses by administering a blow or two with a stout cudgel." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... a brand of fire or a cudgel at the camp," she said with some remorse in her voice, "and run for the river bank." With that she resumed her place ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... Alfenius, when he had let drop His implements of art and shut up shop, Was still a barber, so the wise is best In every craft, a king's among the rest." Hail to your majesty! yet, ne'ertheless, Rude boys are pulling at your beard, I guess; And now, unless your cudgel keeps them off, The mob begins to hustle, push, and scoff; You, all forlorn, attempt to stand at bay, And roar till your imperial lungs give way. Well, so we part: each takes his separate path: You make your progress to your farthing bath, A king, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... gipsies were no mean antagonists. Then, too, the one with the cudgel wielded it skillfully. Time and again Jimsy avoided a heavy blow which, if successful, must have injured him seriously. The girls, screaming, rushed off, carrying "the Wren," as the woman called her, with them. They dashed at top speed back to the spot where ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... him. He was striking about with—yes, here it is," he continued, picking up a stout piece of pine, one of the branches that had been in the fire till the small twigs were burned off, leaving it as a strong cudgel about two feet long. "He struck me with this, and he was dashing ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... night is lighter than morning with the north light. The night"—this with a last drive—"the night is same as day to man of spirit! 'Tis the sort of encouragement half the world needs to succeed," said M. Radisson, throwing down the cudgel. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... revery into which I had unconsciously fallen by a hoarse voice at my elbow repeating a Pater Noster, and turning around, I beheld the jovial Friar of Copmanhurst, one hand grasping a huge oaken cudgel, the other ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... person was standing outside. Now Jim must have determined to drop on somebody, and stationed himself behind the door, for as soon as he heard the knock which I also heard, he hurriedly opened the door, bounced into the open, and commenced to belabour mercilessly, with a stout cudgel, of which he had possessed himself, the "wretch 'at dared to knock at 'is door like that." I sincerely congratulated myself that it wasn't my tender carcase that Jim o' Jack's was playing with. The visitor hadn't had time ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath breaks bubbles,—ought you to write thus having restricted me as you once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my head it goes—I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly the same horror once before. 'I was to see you—and you were to understand'—Do you? do you understand—my own friend—with that ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... village, on finding themselves suddenly surrounded by about two hundred peasants armed with clubs, who fiercely demanded what they wanted, asking them if they had come, as others had before them to-day, to cudgel the men and violate the women, and ordered them to be off immediately to the boats. The luckless fornicators, confounded by this unexpected reception, were heartily glad to be allowed to sneak back to the boat in confusion ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... some small animal which must have traveled very slowly, for in spite of the tiny size of the prints, each was distinct. The man sniffed with instinctive aversion and distrust for this was the trail of the skunk, and if the last of the seven sleepers was out, it was spring indeed. He raised his cudgel ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... in a terrible surprise to find himself in the hands of his old persecutors, from whom he had suffered so much, and hoped that he had been delivered; he lamented the rigour of his destiny, and trembled when he saw Bostava enter with a cudgel, a loaf, and a pitcher of water; he was almost dead at the sight of that unmerciful wretch, and the thoughts of the daily sufferings he was to endure for another year, when he was to die ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... SCAPIN'S trick.) "If you do not tell us at once where your master is, we will shower a rain of blows on your back." I had rather suffer anything than tell you where my master is. "Very well, we will cudgel you soundly." Do as you please. "You want to be beaten, then?" I will never betray my master. "Ah! you will have ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere

... and more than one fellow's teeth came together with a click as he grasped his cudgel tighter in his hand, and resolved to give a good account of himself should it become necessary to do ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... night-watchman at Messrs. Zhivarev. He was a small, lean, unusually lively and active old man of sixty-five, always smiling and blear-eyed. All day he slept in the servants' kitchen or trifled with the cooks. At night, enveloped in an ample sheep-skin coat, he strayed round the domain tapping with his cudgel. Behind him, each hanging its head, walked the old bitch Kashtanka, and the dog Viun, so named because of his black coat and long body and his resemblance to a loach. Viun was an unusually civil and friendly dog, looking as kindly at ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... accomplish the feat all in one sitting. At first he was content to achieve a cutting edge of a couple of inches, with which he cut a long, pliable bow, a handle for his knife, a stout cudgel, and a goodly supply ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... recommendation of an apothecary at Tours got him a place as shop-boy with Monsieur and Madame Ragon, perfumers. Cesar owned at this period a pair of hob-nailed shoes, a pair of breeches, blue stockings, a flowered waistcoat, a peasant's jacket, three coarse shirts of good linen, and his travelling cudgel. If his hair was cut like that of a choir-boy, he at least had the sturdy loins of a Tourangian; if he yielded sometimes to the native idleness of his birthplace, it was counterbalanced by his desire to make ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... Indian will murder any man who strikes him with a switch, a cowhide, or a whip, twenty years afterward, if he gets an opportunity; but readily forgets blows, however severe, inflicted on him with the fist, a cudgel, or a tomahawk. A remarkable ethnological peculiarity of the prognathous race is, that any deserved punishment, inflicted on them with a switch, cowhide, or whip, puts them into good humor with themselves and the executioner of the punishment, provided he manifest satisfaction ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... and she showed off the girl's advantages like a horse-couper with a horse. My face flamed that she should think me so obtuse. Now I would fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of, and then I could have beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and now, that perhaps these two had set their heads together to entrap me, and at that I sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of ill-will. At last the match-maker had a better device, which was to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thought would occur to him, cudgel his brain as he might. And torturing, self-abasing reflections crowded again ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... strange words, which in our modern times might have produced mirth, the guilty creature, losing all self-possession, uttered a loud cry, and pointing to the bloody cudgel which still lay at the magistrate's ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... government. But now were introduced new regulations: the tribune was selected for his military qualities and experience: none was appointed to this important office, "nisi barb plen" The centurion's truncheon, [Footnote: Vitis: and it deserves to be mentioned, that this staff, or cudgel, which was the official engine and cognizance of the Centurion's dignity, was meant expressly to be used in caning or cudgelling the inferior soldiers: "propterea vitis in manum data," says Salmasius, "verberando scilicet militi qui ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... for here we sit in justice: Give to each one a cudgel, a good cudgel: And now attend your sentence. That you are rogues, And mischievous base rascalls, (there's the point now) I ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... with delight. Then she turned upon Anthony eyes swimming with tenderness, put up consoling lips.... The entrance of Polichinelle, however, cudgel and all, in the shape of a little white dog, dragging a bough with him, spoiled her game. Harlequin Sun, too, flashed out of hiding—before his cue, really, for the shower was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... dropped to the ground, picked up his cudgel, then gazed at Dalzell with a look that ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... a voice which did not seem entirely unfamiliar to the shivering youth, though he could not have said exactly to whom it belonged, and was in no mood to cudgel his ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... are, sir," answered Tom, and strode on. Byrne watched him step out on a narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket with a pair of pistols in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel in his hand, he looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care of himself. He turned round for a moment to wave his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers. The lad in goatskin breeches looking, Byrne says, like a faun or ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... you'll agree Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; For El-n's Introduction, crabbed and dry, Like Churchill's Cudgel's {3} ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... on his walk, taking with him a thick cudgel and his own thoughts. He went away across the demesne and down into the road that led away by Gortnaclough and Boherbue towards Castleisland and the wilds of county Kerry. As he went, the men about the place refrained from speaking to him, for they all ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... to rear. I drew sword and dagger, and leaned forward to run this fellow through. As I made my thrust, my senses suddenly went out in a kind of fire-streaked darkness. As I afterwards learned, I had been struck on the back of the head with a loaded cudgel by one of the unseen men behind. When I came to myself I was lying on the earth in a little bushy hollow away from the road: my hands were tied behind me, and around each ankle was fastened a rope, of which one of my assailants ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... just time for a start and a response, 'M. Arture! And is it yourself?' before a howl of vituperation was heard—of abuse of all the ancestry of the cur of an infidel slave, the father of tardiness—and a savage-looking man appeared, brandishing a cudgel, with which he was about to belabour his unfortunate slave, when he was arrested by astonishment, and perhaps terror, at the goodly company of Marabouts. Hadji Eseb entered into conversation with him, and meanwhile Lanty broke forth, 'O wirrah, wirrah, Master ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and, affecting to be offended, demanded sternly: "Monsieur Montigny, am I a mere mechanic to do your bidding? Brandish the law indeed! Is, then, the law but an ordinary cudgel, to thwack the shoulders with or beat the brains out? The law, sir, is a sacred weapon, not to be lightly taken up, neither to be profanely applied to paltry uses, any more than we would take the tempered razor to pick a bone, or pare our cheese with. Brandish the law! The man ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... lawyer thinks it all very right,' said Summertrees, looking at Fairford—'an OLD lawyer might have thought otherwise. However, the cudgel was to be found to beat the dog, and they chose a heavy one. Well, I kept my spirits better than my companion, poor fellow; for I had the luck to have neither wife nor child to think about, and Harry Redgauntlet had ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... counted without his host. Don Porker was tired, and wouldn't budge an inch. Gudbrand talked to him, coaxed him, swore at him, but all in vain; he dragged him by the snout, he pushed him from behind, he whacked him on both his fat sides with a cudgel, but it was only labor lost, and Mr. Hog remained there in the middle of the dusty road like a stranded whale. The poor farmer was yielding to despair, when, at the very nick of time, there came along a country ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... Evander narrowly while he spoke. Skill with the rapier did not necessarily imply skill with the cudgel. He bore Evander no grudge for overcoming him at fence, but if Sir Blaise proved the better man with the batoon, there would be a kind of compensation in it. He had heard that Sir Blaise was apt at country-sports and now Sir Blaise vaunted ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy



Words linked to "Cudgel" :   club, shillalah, shillelagh, bastinado, hit



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com