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Cudgel   Listen
noun
Cudgel  n.  A staff used in cudgel play, shorter than the quarterstaff, and wielded with one hand; hence, any heavy stick used as a weapon. "He getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel and... falls to rating of them as if they were dogs."
Cudgel play, a fight or sportive contest with cudgels.
To cross the cudgels, to forbear or give up the contest; a phrase borrowed from the practice of cudgel players, who lay one cudgel over another when the contest is ended.
To take up cudgels for, to engage in a contest in behalf of (some one or something).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cudgel" Quotes from Famous Books



... kings to contend with." He seems to have been altogether indifferent to athletic exercises; for though he gave more prizes than any one else to be contended for by dramatists, flute players, harp players, and even by rhapsodists,[397] and though he delighted in all manner of hunting and cudgel playing, he never seems to have taken any interest in the contests of boxing or the pankratium.[398] When ambassadors from the King of Persia arrived in Macedonia, Philip was absent, and Alexander entertained them. His ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... as Milton called it, "the precious lifeblood of a master spirit." Theirs is a true immortality, for it is their soul, and not their talent, that survives in their work. Dante's concise forthrightness of phrase, which to that of most other poets is as a stab[260] to a blow with a cudgel, the vigor of his thought, the beauty of his images, the refinement of his conception of spiritual things, are marvellous if we compare him with his age and its best achievement. But it is for his power of inspiring and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... wrath when they found Carlyle suggesting that King Friedrich Wilhelm would have laid a stick across the shoulders of literary men had he been able to have his own way. The unfeeling old king used to go about thumping people in the streets with a big cudgel; and Carlyle rather implies that the world would not have been much the worse off if a stray literary man here and there could have been bludgeoned. The king flogged apple-women who did not knit and loafers who were unable to find work; and our historian apparently fancies that the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... 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

... sitting quietly at dinner on February 9, 1597-8, John Davis came into the hall with his hat on his head, and attended by two persons armed with swords, and going up to the barrister's table, where Richard Martin was sitting, he pulled out from under his gown a cudgel 'quem vulgariter vocant a bastinado,' and struck him over the head repeatedly, and with so much violence that the bastinado was shivered into many pieces. Then retiring to the bottom of the hall, he drew one of his attendants' swords and flourished ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... thrash, batter, conquer, pommel, strike, vanquish, belabor, cudgel, pound, surpass, whip, bruise, defeat, scourge, switch, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... 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 his ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... in such haste 't would be to cudgel some manners into thy big carcase, Master Insolent; but come now, prythee be a good lad and bring me to the governor, the captain, and the elder, for time and tide are pressing, and I would ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... bound forward, wincing with pain, for he had suddenly received a heavy blow on the back from the short cudgel the boy behind him bore, and as he turned fiercely upon him, thrusting the trowel into his basket and doubling his fist to return the blow, the first boy struck him heavily across the shoulder ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... newspaper. He was dressed in very plain, brown clothes, but of good quality, with large flaps to his waistcoat, grey woollen stockings, and large buckles. In his under-lip he had a prodigious large quid of tobacco, and he leaned on a very thick oaken cudgel, which, I afterwards learned, he cut in the woods of Hawthornden. His broad, bright, and benevolent countenance at one glance, bespoke powerful intellect and unbounded good-will, with a very visible sparkle of merry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... from within. 'Thou mayest safely approach the window now, for the gaoler hath departed. After he had beaten thee and the other Friends with his great cudgel, next he was moved to beat me also, through the window, did I but come near to it to get my meat. And as he struck me I was moved to sing in the Lord's power, and that made him rage the more, whereat he fetched the fiddler, saying he would soon drown my noise ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... happy days. Then I changed my clothes and went out. Sapt and Fritz were waiting for me with six men and the horses. Over his saddle Sapt carried a long coil of rope, and both were heavily armed. I had with me a short stout cudgel and a long knife. Making a circuit, we avoided the town, and in an hour found ourselves slowly mounting the hill that led to the Castle of Zenda. The night was dark and very stormy; gusts of wind and spits of ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... his ire, Lived a little distance off. With his jealous soul on fire Cudgel stout suits his desire; He has ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... 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

... 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, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... with the sensitive, but as if it were insensate, has engendered the coarse and hard spirit of a sorcerer. The former is unable, the latter unwilling, to master the absolute pre-requisites. There is neither hope nor occasion for him "to cudgel his brains about it, he has no feeling of the business." If he do not see the necessity from without, if he have not learned the possibility from within, of interpenetration, of total intussusception, of the existence of all in each as the condition of Nature's unity and substantiality, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... don't do that! Don't even box his ears in the street, but give a street-porter ten shillings to cudgel him well as he comes out of the theatre; that will ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... to Bishop Cotton of Salisbury, at the end of 1598, for the change of his lease of Sherborne into the fee. He was building there a new mansion. He was playing primero at the Palace with Lord Southampton, and doubtless as eagerly, though he did not, like the Peer, threaten to cudgel the Royal Usher who told them they must go to bed. He was exclaiming at the supineness which suffered Spain to prepare expeditions against Flanders or Ireland, capture 'our small men-of-war,' and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... accompanying envelope, and found within a real instead of a figurative blister, he grew crimson with rage. But he was consoled when he went to horsewhip his attorney, and met the chemist pelting down the street with O'Grady tearing after him with a cudgel. For some years O'Grady had successfully kept out of his door every process-server sent by his innumerable creditors; but now, having got a cold, he had dispatched his man to the chemist for a blister, and owing to Handy Andy, he obtained ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... This time the cudgel of the spirit invisible to Pharaoh did not strike him: it came down gently and rested lightly on the king's out-stretched arm. And Pharaoh could not move it. He ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... that's something like the truth; but you are not quite at the truth yet, my lad; those apples are mine, and I'll trouble you to come down as fast as you please; when you're down we can then settle our accounts; and," continued the man, shaking his cudgel, "depend upon it you shall have ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... exactly the reverse of that of the American Indian. The 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 ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... hesitated for a moment, growling and showing their claws and their white teeth. Quick as thought Carson cut and trimmed from the tree a stout cudgel, which would neither break nor bend. Soon, one of the bears commenced climbing the tree. The nose of the bear is very tender, and is the only point vulnerable ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... the Duke's grace purveyor to the mint, passed by me. No sooner had he got outside the church than the dirty pig let fly four cracks which might have been heard from San Miniato. I cried: "Yah! pig, poltroon, donkey! is that the noise your filthy talents make?" and ran off for a cudgel. He took refuge on the instant in the mint; while I stationed myself inside my housedoor, which I left ajar, setting a boy at watch upon the street to warn me when the pig should leave the mint. After waiting some time, I grew tired, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... upon both by the gentry and peasantry of the country side as a most eccentric individual. He could be seen any day wandering about, dressed in the most shabby manner, and wearing a coat that was frequently in urgent need of repair, a leathern cap on his head, wooden shoes, and a stout oaken cudgel in his hand. In winter he supplemented to these an ancient sheepskin coat. He was sixty years of age, very powerfully built, and possessing enormous strength. The expression upon his face showed that his will was as strong as his thews and sinews. Beneath ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... Stanford, the word is entered as of aboriginal origin, but many now hold that it is the English word wood mispronounced by aboriginal lips. L. E. Threlkeld, in his 'Australian Grammar,' at p. 10, enters it as a "barbarism "—"waddy, a cudgel." A 'barbarism,' with Threlkeld, often means no more than 'not in use on the Hunter River'; but in this case his ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... work very willingly. To coerce people by shame, or other spiritual pelting, into the giving up of things it will probably vex them to part with, is a form of piety to which the boyish mind is most readily converted; and if some obstinately wicked men got enraged and threatened the whip or the cudgel, this also was exciting. Savonarola himself evidently felt about the training of these boys the difficulty weighing on all minds with noble yearnings towards great ends, yet with that imperfect perception of means ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... than living in another epoch, for example. One hundred and fifty years ago, Contessina, in Venice, you would have been liable to arrest any day under a warrant of the Council of Ten.... And you, Dorsenne, would have been exposed to the cudgel like Monsieur de Voltaire, by some jealous lord.... And Prince d'Ardea would have run the risk of being assassinated or beheaded at each change of Pope. And I, in my quality of Protestant, should have been driven from France, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... King Olaf named Kolbein Strong; he was from the Firths by kin. He had ever this gear, that he was girded with a sword, and had a large cudgel or club in his hand. The King bade Kolbein be close to him on the morrow. And then he ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... his squad in a single rank, ordering the soldiers to fix bayonets. Prescott formed his own squad as a second platoon. As Tom Halstead hastened up he carried a stout cudgel, while Hank Butts carried the hitching weight that had made ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... which to make amends for the catastrophe she had so ingenuously engineered. To the discovery of a method for retrieving her error, she gave her mind with an almost frenzied concentration; but the effort was fruitless. Cudgel her wearied brain as she would, it could not make pace to the goal she sought. When, after a sleepless night, she rose, it was with the maze of disaster still unthreaded. Her usual ingenuity of resource was become impotent. Raging against her own supineness, she ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... were always interesting, and the more so because it was a large old copy with big print and plenty of pictures throughout. That of Saul raising Samuel had a never-ceasing attraction for Susan, and Sophia Jane was fond of the part about Giant Despair and his grievous crab-tree cudgel. In the morning they all went with Aunt Hannah to chapel, which was only five minutes' walk from the house; the prayers were long, and they could seldom understand the sermon, though they had to listen to it ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton

... I asked you why heaven condemned these two to death. (To the VICAR.) You are a clergyman; cudgel your brains! ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... that flouter at all such fruitions. Nor can I here omit to observe, how, when the devil raised up Parker, that monster, to bark and blaspheme, the Lord raised up a Merveil to fight him at his own weapon, who did so cudgel and quell that boasting bravo, as I know not if he be dead of his wound, but for any thing I know, he ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... 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 his fortune; if ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

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

... of his plan. He no doubt speedily found that mere ridicule of Richardson was insufficient to sustain the interest of any serious effort, and, besides, must have been secretly conscious that the "Pamela" characteristics of his hero were artistically irreconcilable with the personal bravery and cudgel-playing attributes with which he had endowed him. Add to this that the immortal Mrs. Slipslop and Parson Adams—the latter especially—had begun to acquire an importance with their creator for which ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... ordinary dress, Jack tied a belt of cocoa-nut cloth round his waist, into which he thrust the axe. I was also advised to put on a belt and carry a short cudgel or bludgeon in it; for, as Jack truly remarked, the sling would be of little use if we should chance to come to close quarters with any wild animal. As for Peterkin, notwithstanding that he carried such a long, and I must add, frightful- looking spear over his ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... 1805 that we were first ushered into the dining-house called the Cheshire Cheese, in Wine-office-court. It is known that Johnson once lodged in this court, and bought an enormous cudgel while there, to resist a threatened attack from Macpherson, the author, or editor, of Ossian's Poems. At the time we first knew the place (for its visiters and keepers are long since changed for the third or fourth time,) many came ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various

... contrary curiosity (of which singularity, also, I do not want domestic example), seems to be somewhat akin to this, that a man shall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life to contrive his obsequies to so particular and unusual a parsimony as of one servant with a lantern, I see this humour commended, and the appointment of Marcus. Emilius Lepidus, who forbade his heirs to bestow ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... oaths, sorely at variance with his habit, he snatched it back, flung the bag across his shoulder, and made off at a round pace down the road, while Martin roared after him to wait an alms laid on with a cudgel. ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... what he's afraid of, Monsieur Louis. Give me a good sickle and a good cudgel, and I'm not afraid of a wolf; give me a good gun and I'm not afraid of any man, even if I knew he's waiting to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... young couples that came together without money; but he mingled in every rustic diversion, and bore away the prize in every contest. He excelled every swain of that district in feats of strength and activity; in leaping, running, wrestling, cricket, cudgel-playing, and pitching the bar; and was confessed to be, out of sight, the best dancer at all wakes and holidays. Happy was the country-girl who could engage the young squire as her partner! To be sure, it was a ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... which Ann street is famous, had commenced. Such a scene was too much the element of Cod-mouth Pat for him to remain tranquil during its progress; with an unearthly yell he grasped a short, thick cudgel which he always carried, and leaving the "Pig Pen," plunged into the thickest of the fight. Many a black eye and broken head attested the vigor of his arm; but the glory of his achievements did not screen him from being borne to the watchhouse, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... how to wield no other weapons than those of persuasion. "And what if persuasion be not enough?" rejoins my father. "Do you think it would be amiss to re-enforce argument with a few good blows of a cudgel?" The complete missionary, according to my father's opinion, should know how, on occasion, to have recourse to these heroic measures, and, as my father has read a great many tales and romances, he cites various examples in support of his opinion. He ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... to do further with them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... Peter, "I think that dog was nothing more or less than a downright cur, that deserved the lash nine times a day, if it was only for his want of respect to the clergy; if he had given me such insolence, I solemnly declare I would have bate the devil out of him with a hazel cudgel, if I failed to ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... incident in the last campaign. A joint discussion was progressing between a bright member of the legal fraternity, who was advocating the present order and extolling the Republican past, and an uncouth but clever old farmer, who took up the cudgel in behalf of financial reform. The lawyer vociferously declared the demand notes never sold at par with gold. The farmer calmly insisted that they did, and read from an authority. The lawyer demanded the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... slothful; postillions lazy, lounging, greedy, and impertinent. With this last class of delinquents after much experience he was bound to admit the following dilemma:—If you chide them for lingering, they will contrive to delay you the longer. If you chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or horsewhip (he defines the correctives, you may perceive, but leaves the expletives to our imagination) they will either disappear entirely, and leave you without resource, or they will find means to take ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... only guess; but he did know that the beast must have ripped the clothes partly off the aeronaut's back, and in turn he could see that one of the animal's eyes was partly closed, from a vigorous whack which the desperate man had given with his cudgel, no doubt. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... reach a square plain house, the windows all barred with stout iron, and the most like a prison I did ever see. Here Don Sanchez ringing a bell, a little grating in the door is opened, and after some parley we are admitted by a sturdy fellow carrying a cudgel in his hand. So we into a cold room, with not a spark of fire on the hearth but a few ashes, no hangings to the windows, nor any ornament or comfort at all, but only a table and half a dozen wooden stools, and a number of shelves against the wall full of account ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... I am hoarse a bawling to you, and you lye snoring still, you'll sleep for ever I think in my Conscience; either get up presently or I'll rouze you with a good Cudgel. When will you have slept out your Yesterday's Debauch? Are you not asham'd, you sleepy Sot, to lye a-bed till this time of Day? Good Servants rise as soon as it is Day, and take Care to get every Thing in order before their Master rises. How loth this Drone ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... Jack took the slim cudgel from, his chum, who, at a silent signal, slipped back and picked up some of the slashed cord. There was enough of it to ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... it were a separate and independent nation, whose sons, in imitation of LaFayette, Kosciusko and DeKalb, were devoting their best blood to the maintenance of free government in a foreign land; while Taylor, incited thereto by this eulogy on Wisconsin, took up the cudgel for Kentucky, and dwelt enthusiastically on the gallantry of her men and the ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... of suave ambiguities and formal inanities, found vent in most vigorous and unmistakeable language; dogmatic obiter dicta came from his mouth or his pen like so many cudgel-thwacks. His nature was tense and intense, very excitable and subject to aberrant moods—and he was often the victim of a false ply, as the French would say. It cannot be gainsaid that his suspicions of society ways, and of ordinarily conventional literary men, often betrayed ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... did not fall. From this, the report went abroad that there was a sort of melee in school, and the teacher was flung upon the floor in the scuffle. By the time Samuel found himself on his back, the teacher stood over him with what the young rebel called a cugel (cudgel) in ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... Friday, a pair of breeches was thrown over the cow's horns; she was then driven from the shippen with a stout cudgel. The place to which she directed her flight was carefully watched, for there assuredly must dwell the witch. To the great horror and dismay of Giles Dickisson, the cow came bellowing down the lane, tail up, in great terror—telling, as plain as beast could speak, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... David; and the man that bore his shield went before him. And when the Philistine looked about and saw David, he disdained him, for David was but a boy, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. And he said to David, "Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with a cudgel?" And with curses he cried out again, "Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... small pool of blood near his head, was next examined, and pronounced alive—he was breathing, but dazed and shocked; for a large-caliber bullet glancing upon the skull has somewhat the same effect as the blow of a cudgel. He opened his eyes as the men examined them, and dimly heard what ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... out and smash every one of the windows, and they immediately began to open the door of the coach, to put their threat into execution. Upon hearing this, I lost not a moment's time, but darted in doors, and having seized a faithful cudgel, I sallied out, with the determination of taking prisoner the first man that threw a stone, and, at all hazards, conducting him into my parlour, where he should have drank long life and success to Napoleon upon his knees, before he should have been liberated. This was the resolution I formed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... animal in the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him. Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat, caught ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... withdrawn and he was looking inside a poor hut, smoky from the wood-fire in the midst of it. An old woman sat by it with a bowl in her hand, and an oldish man with a cudgel stood before him. He did not understand their speech, but he gathered he ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... bloodee was thus described: "A kind of cudgel worn, or rather borne, by the bloods of a certain college in New England, 2 feet 5 inches in length, and 1-7/8 inch in diameter, with a huge piece of lead at one end, emblematical of its owner. A pretty prop for clumsy travellers ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... minister: "I have charged Blainvilliers to show him a cudgel and tell him that with its aid we can make ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fairly squirmed 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 ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... pleasuring and omit their drill, but we forced them to go through it, Junker von Warmond, Duivenvoorde and I. Who knows how soon it may be necessary to show what we can do. Roland, my fore man, such imprudence is like a cudgel, against which one can do nothing with Florentine rapiers, clever tierce and quarto. My wheat is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... 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 ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... tight-fitting brown frieze jerkin with stone buttons, and purple hose, his head was covered with a montero cap, with a cock's feather stuck in it. He was armed neither with sword nor dagger, but carried a large cudgel or club, the well-known and formidable weapon, of the London 'prentices, in the use of which, whether as a quarterstaff or missile, they were remarkably expert. Even a skilful swordsman stood but poor chance with them. Besides this saucy-looking personage, who ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... the life of him, he could not tell why. His sense of proportion, his social sense, his self-complacency, grew restive under the pressure of it. He told himself it wasn't of the smallest consequence, didn't matter a fig, yet continued to cudgel his memory. And, all the while, the sound of deliberate footsteps crunching over the dry rattling shingle, nearer and nearer, contributed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... hand, stepped out and approached the mail. But when he heard the cries of the comedians, who were still protesting against the admission of a Thirteenth traveller, he started suddenly back, swinging his cudgel in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... exchanged troubled glances. Sartan took up the cudgel. "Auriga is a constellation, a star cluster, sir. It is forty-two million ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg

... Scourge. — N. scourge, rod, cane, stick; ratan[obs3], rattan; birch, birch rod; azote[obs3], blacksnake[obs3], bullwhack [obs3][U.S.], chicote[obs3], kurbash[obs3], quirt, rawhide, sjambok[obs3]; rod in pickle; switch, ferule, cudgel, truncheon. whip, bullwhip, lash, strap, thong, cowhide, knout; cat, cat o'nine tails; rope's end. pillory, stocks, whipping post; cucking stool[obs3], ducking stool; brank[obs3]; trebuchet[obs3], trebuket[obs3]. triangle[instruments of torture: list], wooden ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will stare him out of his wits; I will awe him with my cudgel: 250 it shall hang like a meteor o'er the cuckold's horns. Master Brook, thou shalt know I will predominate over the peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. —Come to me soon at night. Ford's a knave, and I will aggravate his style; thou, Master Brook, shalt know ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... in a great Family, and Elizabeth waits upon the Daughter of one as numerous, some Miles off of her Lover. James, before he beheld Betty, was vain of his Strength, a rough Wrestler, and quarrelsome Cudgel-Player; Betty a Publick Dancer at Maypoles, a Romp at Stool-Ball: He always following idle Women, she playing among the Peasants: He a Country Bully, she a Country Coquet. But Love has made her constantly in her Mistress's Chamber, where the young Lady gratifies ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... first, Eddie next, and Junkie brought up the rear. On nearing the field the first wrenched a stake out of a fence; the second caught up a rake, that had been left by the haymakers; and the last, unscrewing the butt of his rod, broke the line, and flourished the weapon as a cudgel. They all three leaped into the field one after another, and bore courageously down on the bull, being well accustomed to deal with animals ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... epigrams or invectives. Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with "pious passion," pretended that his moral character was injured, and for some time declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship," and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of the meaning imputed to the first expression. Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... through natural defects which grew more pronounced in the constant friction of the household. The king, an odd tyrant with a soft heart but a violent temper, tried to compel love and confidence with a cudgel; he possessed keen insight into human nature, but was so ignorant that he always ran the risk of becoming the victim of a scoundrel. Dimly aware of his weakness, he had grown suspicious and was subject to sudden fits of violence. The queen, in contrast, was a rather insignificant woman, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... tremble under Fortune's cummock [cudgel] On scarce a bellyfu' o' drummock, [meal and water] Wi' his proud independent stomach, Could ill agree; So row't his hurdies in a hammock, [rolled, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... the charge he wished to make. At last, by turning his back, he managed to speak his base and foolish thought. She, thinking this a jest, at first made light of it, but when he faced her once more, frowning this time, like a thunder-cloud, and brandishing the cudgel above his head, she was filled with fear and could hardly keep her feet. She denied the charge. She begged that he would tell the names of her accusers that she ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the human heart; and nobles accustomed to command their bondmen will treat their domestics as slaves, as capricious or inhuman West Indians treated their domestic slaves. Those of Siberia punish theirs by a free use of the cudgel or rod. The Abbe Chappe saw two Russian slaves undress a chambermaid, who had by some trifling negligence given offence to her mistress; after having uncovered as far as her waist, one placed her head betwixt his knees; the other held ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... (weep) plori. Cry out ekkrii. Cry (of animals, etc.) bleki. Crypt subterajxo. Crystal kristalo. Crystallise kristaligi. Cub (of lion) leonido. Cube kubo. Cuckoo kukolo. Cucumber kukumo. Cudgel bastonego. Cuff manumo. Cuirass kiraso. Cull kolekti. Cullender kribrilo. Culpable kulpa. Culprit kulpulo. Cultivate kulturi. Culture kulturo. Cunning ruzo. Cunning ruza. Cup taso. Cupboard ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... 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

... perfect straightforwardness, omitting nothing, adding nothing, he gave her the narrative of that fatal night's events, from the first moment he had laid eyes on the wonderfully-disguised woman, till her cudgel-blow had laid him ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... picked up a rather stout cudgel which he swung a few times as if to accustom his ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

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

... any of your words? I have seen you gleeking[4] and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel: you find it otherwise; and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... and the two of them were devouring a great pasty, and washing it down with some drink from a stone jar. The chapman broke a rough jest as he passed, and the woman called shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them, on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor her with his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief, and his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... other. These dogs never barked, but howled with the weird, dismal howl of the wolf. And when they were hungry they were such dangerous, savage brutes that it was unsafe for a stranger, unless armed with a cudgel, to wander among them. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... to declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though," Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... so at that time departed Aias, vexed at heart, from among the Trojans, right unwillingly, for he feared sore for the ships of the Achaians. And as when a lazy ass going past a field hath the better of the boys with him, an ass that hath had many a cudgel broken about his sides, and he fareth into the deep crop, and wasteth it, while the boys smite him with cudgels, and feeble is the force of them, but yet with might and main they drive him forth, when he hath had ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... manner of men they are? They have not had wisdom enough to manage their own estates, and are they now to teach the King {84} and Your Highness how to govern the country? By the living God, if my advice were taken, their petition should have a cudgel for a commentary, and we would make them go down the steps of the palace a great deal faster than ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... blunder in the words and tune with a stroke of his hammer. The result is such a din as disturbs the slumbers of the neighbours. David, the apprentice, comes out and recognises his sweetheart Magdalena at Eva's window. He scents a rival in Beckmesser, and begins lustily to cudgel the unfortunate musician. Soon the street fills with townsfolk and apprentices, all crying and shouting together. Eva and Walther, under cover of the uproar, are making their escape, when Sachs, who has been ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... movements. It is clearly the right of the policeman to judge 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 ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... wood. "Hey there, you black porker!" cried the boy, as he threw a stone at some pig which was running away. "Get along, you lazy long-snout!" he shouted to another, as he came thump on its back with his cudgel. And then he sung this song with a loud voice ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod

... other emotions, might have been a difficult problem for the cynic. But when she tilted her chin and stared the offender full in the eyes, propping her plump little hands in the side-pockets of her white reefer, Captain Mayo, like a man hit by a cudgel, was struck with the sudden and bewildering knowledge that he did not know much about women, for she asked, with a quizzical drawl, "Just what is there about me, dear captain, to inspire that everlasting regret which seems to be ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but Voltaire—he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded Voltaire as an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up the cudgel of the Catholic Church that had burned his books. The real fact was, the pamphlet wasn't a defense of Catholicism—it was only a drubbing of Calvinism, and the wit was too subtle ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... 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, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... lanthorn on high, and his ice-axe so that it could be used as a cudgel in case of attack; and as soon as the first bend was passed there were clear evidences of pieces of ice having been thrown, while a minute later a good-sized piece grazed the lanthorn, and another struck Saxe ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... cudgel among the Mongols was not confined to thieves and such like. It was the punishment also of military and state offences, and even princes were liable to it without fatal disgrace. "If they give any offence," says Carpini, "or omit to obey ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... guarding carefully against revealing the real object of their questioning. He, for his part, set it down to the natural curiosity they felt in an event that touched the life of one of them so nearly, and did his best to cudgel his memory. But nothing more came of it than they had already learned, and it was with a sense of depression and failure that they finally gave up the cross examination that they had come so ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... her—scarcely dry on her living lips? Who am I who speak, asses of the common? Gentilla Stanley, whose father was Pharaoh before her, and who can call up the ghosts of dead Egyptian kings, with a tent for a palace, and a cudgel for a sceptre, and the wisdom of our people at ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... informed of what had occurred by one of the waiters, who knew the truant's haunts at any hour, came rushing into the room, and without waiting for an explanation, set upon the major with the fury of a goaded tiger, and when he had belabored him with a cudgel until they all declared there was not life enough in him to last till day light, drew a knife, and had despatched him on the spot, but for General Benthornham, who, being called upon to quell the outbreak, had armed himself with his sword, and came toddling into the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... namely, that if a secret is to be kept at all, it must be worth the keeping; if a riddle is propounded, its answer must be pleasing and ingenious, or the audience will resent having been led to cudgel its brains for nothing. This is simply a part of the larger principle, before insisted on, that when a reasonable expectation is aroused, it can be baffled only at the author's peril. If the crux ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... a bould yeoman, and bid him for to stand; "If I do, I'm damn'd!" said he, "although you cut it grand. I'm an old English farmer, and do not me provoke I've a cudgel, look ye here, it's a prime tough bit of oak! And I'll give you some gravy, [5] Of that I'll take my davy, [6] If you try to prig ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... earnest and longing look. There was a peculiar expression about Kitty's face: a sort of new, thoughtful look, as though something was worrying her and causing her to cudgel her brains to quite a remarkable extent. Kitty Malone had never yet been affected with shyness, nor was she shy now. Just as Gwin's carriage appeared and the other girls made way for it as was their wont, and Elma approached quite close to Alice, meaning to make ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... him a formidable antagonist in any rustic encounter, and in such he was frequently engaged, being of a very irascible temper, and turbulent disposition. He was clad in a holiday suit of dark-green serge, which fitted him well, and carried a nosegay in one hand, and a stout blackthorn cudgel in the other. This young man was James Device, son of Elizabeth, and some four or five years older than Alizon. He did not live with his mother in Whalley, but in Pendle Forest, near his old relative, Mother Demdike, and had come over that ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Border way, Sim followed in Wat's wake, into the bog and beyond the burn. He laired to his knees, but he scarcely heeded it. There was a big man before him, a foolish, red-haired fellow, who was making great play with a cudgel. He had shivered two spears and was singing low to himself. Farther off Wat had his axe in hand and was driving the enemy to the brae. There were dead men in the moss. Sim stumbled over a soft body, and a hand caught feebly at his heel. "To ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... pack along the roads. Well, now you must come in with me, and drink a glass of mulled wine with my wife if she hasn't gone to bed, for she is a sound sleeper, and doesn't like to be waked up. Besides, I'm not a bit afraid without my pack, and so I'll see you to the gates of the city with a cudgel in my hand." ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... 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 ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... window, at a great height, and saw about twenty or thirty fine lads sporting in a court below. "This is as it should be," said I; "those boys will not make worse priests from a little early devotion to trap-ball and cudgel playing. I dislike a staid, serious, puritanic education, as I firmly believe that it encourages ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... now. From what Neal has told us it's evident that you're wrong about Lord Dunseveric. It wasn't he who brought the yeomen on us. There is someone else giving information, and it's someone who knows a good deal. Come now, brother Micah, cudgel your brains; think, man, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... his tongue as the throstle's note, Quick in dance as thought can be, Deft his tabour, cudgel stout; O! he lies by the willow-tree: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... with a set of dull idlers,' replied Milo, 'who want nothing but Roman rods to teach them a quick and wholesome movement. Friend, lend me thy cudgel; and I will engage to set thy beasts and thee too in motion. If not, consider that we are new comers, and Romans withal, and that ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... rogues did it in scorn of us," said Dick Wildblood of the Dale, "I would cudgel their psalmody out of their peasantly throats with this very truncheon;" a motion which, being seconded by old Roger Raine, the drunken tapster of the Peveril Arms in the village, might have brought on a general battle, but that Sir Jasper ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... whose name was Saevuna. She was wise in many things, and foresighted; but she was then very old, and Njal's sons called her an old dotard, when she talked so much, but still some things which she said came to pass. It fell one day that she took a cudgel in her hand, and went up above the house to a stack of vetches. She beat the stack of vetches with her cudgel, and wished it might never thrive, "wretch that ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... pillar, ranne fretting towards me and said, How long shall wee suffer this wild Asse, that doth not onely eat up his fellowes meat, but also would spoyl the images of the gods? Why doe I not kill this lame theefe and weake wretch. And therewithall looking about for some cudgel, hee espied where lay a fagot of wood, and chusing out a crabbed truncheon of the biggest hee could finde, did never cease beating of mee poore wretch, until such time as by great noyse and rumbling, hee heard the doores of the house burst open, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... boy cast an occasional look alongside the path. He was in search of a good stout cudgel. Knowing that the chances were the affair would presently come to a face-to-face issue between the two parties, he wished to be prepared as ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... leopardess; Ithuriel's spear glances pointless from a rhinoceros' hide. To match what is low and beat it, you must stoop, and soil your hands to cut a cudgel rough and ready. She did not see this; and seeing it, would not have lowered herself ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... teasing. He wondered if he should have had the courage to speak up for St. Joseph's Day. He should have found it difficult to oppose Brother George, whom he liked and revered. But in this case he was wrong, and perhaps he was also wrong to make the observation of St. Joseph's Day a cudgel with ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... 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, with ne'er a follower in your train, Except ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bear and bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste for blood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swung the cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matter of public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven in the cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cart moved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs in order ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

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

... wondering whether it was not some affair of Leslie's from the Hall, and whether he ought not to slip away after all. The birch boughs sighed a little, there was a fluttering down of withered leaves, and he remained undecided, gripping his stout oak cudgel by the middle. Then the hot blood pulsed fiercely through every artery, for the voice rose once more, harsh and clear this time, with almost a threat in the tone, and there was no possibility of doubting that the speaker ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... the heavy stick which the mother described him as having with him when he followed Drebber. It was a stout oak cudgel." ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... when the Berkshire; Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire men amused themselves by cracking each other's heads and cudgel-playing for a gold-laced hat and a pair of buckskin breeches; when a flitch of bacon was run for by donkeys; and when, last, but not least, John Morse, of Uffington, "grinned agin another chap droo hos [horse] collars, a fine bit of spwoart, to be sure, and made the folks ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... had a very amusing talk with the celebrated admiral, Sir Charles Napier, who was present on horseback, in a British post- captain's uniform, but with a little hat, a la Napoleon, with a Portuguese cockade, his trousers all worked up, huge spurs on his feet, and an enormous cudgel in his grasp. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... them, keeping her eye cautiously fixed on the stepping-stones as she went along, when she was startled by a voice which sounded close beside her. On glancing round she saw on the opposite bank a boy standing with a huge twisted cudgel in his hand, brandishing it in a warlike attitude. He seemed to have suddenly appeared round one of the hillocks, and was now shouting excitedly, in his rough northern dialect, as ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... 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 saltpetre into the wounds. Napier (I., ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... than a quarter of an hour he came back with a corporal's guard of the night-watchmen, armed with clumsy broadswords, but each carrying a serviceable iron-shod cudgel of cornel-wood which, according to old Roman rhyme, breaks bones so easily that the blows do not even hurt: 'Corniale, rompe le ossa e non fa male.' The corporal himself carried an elaborately ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... of Richard Lion-Heart, another manner of man than himself. We said nought to this, not choosing to dine in such high company, but rode up under the walls of Roye, defying the Duke with open ribaldry, such as no manant could bear but he would take cudgel in hand to defend his honour. Our intent was, if the Duke accepted battle, to fight with none but him, if perchance we might take him, and hold him as hostage for ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... offered seven tayes the yard. They also offered for out Priaman gold eleven tayes of silver for one of gold. But they went away without concluding any bargain. This day, one of our men named Francis Williams, being drunk ashore, struck one of the servants of king Foyne with a cudgel, although the man had given him no offence, and had not even spoken to him. The Japanese came to our house making great complaints, and was very angry, not without cause, and told me he would complain to his king of the bad usage he had received. He had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... in front; the driver sitting postilion-wise, and turns round to look through the window behind him at the little doves within. The gentlemen behind are also anxious to catch a glimpse of the ladies. One of those who are running at the side may be gently rebuked for his curiosity by the cudgel of Hugh. So they cut away, sir, as ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... cudgel that way. In short, if you will take my prudent advice, do not let us be so obstinate as to remain in the street; let us go and shut ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... to think. No thought of that bird came into my mind. And so I had to cudgel my brain to think how it did disappear. For I HAD to know! Yes, I positively ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... Josephs in all in the little log house on the prairie; so that when each little Joseph wanted to give a Christmas box to each of the other little Josephs, and something to Father and Mother Joseph besides, it is no wonder that they had to cudgel their small brains for ways ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... approached, brandishing a study cudgel, which, wielded by his muscular arm, would have proved a formidable weapon. For some minutes he had seen the man at the foot of the tree, but the sleeper did not move, and this doubtless induced him to come and look at him a little nearer. He came forward then, not without hesitation, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... 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 one of ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... 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 deliquisset." We are no patrons of corporal chastisement, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It was, in some degree, Northern insight matched against Southern doggedness—the dirk against the cudgel—and Henchard's weapon was one which, if it did not deal ruin at the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh at ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... 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 broke down ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... him off; he preferred to associate with tradesmen's apprentices, and was continually greeting acquaintances right and left—people who were in a better position than himself. Alfred put on airs of importance which made Pelle long one fine day to cudgel him soundly. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... to drink is no art. A horse can drink. No, it must be done in the right way. In my young days we used to sit and cudgel our brains all day over our lessons, but as soon as evening came we would fly off on some spree and keep it up till dawn. How we used to dance and flirt, and drink, too! Or sometimes we would sit and chatter and discuss everything under the ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov

... Tower—did not the senor remember? It was a fortification dating from the time of the corsairs. Don Jaime had scrambled up to it many times when a child, shouting like a young warrior, flourishing a cudgel of juniper wood, giving orders for the assault upon ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... help for it, said the Master Thief; he should go whether he would or no; and if he did not go by fair means, he would soon make him go by foul. But the man was still loath to go; so he stepped after him, and rubbed him down with a good birch cudgel, and kept on till the man came crying and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... pounce down, irrepressible, whole ranks of them; lift water, clean or dirty; drink it greedily from the brim of the hat. Sergeants may wag their tongues and their cudgels at discretion: 'showers of cudgel-strokes,' says Archenholtz; Sergeants going like threshers on the poor men;—'though the upper Officers had a touch of mercy, and affected not to see this disobedience to the Sergeants and their cudgels,' which was ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... 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} marked ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... in: the stove 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 ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... the slaves who declared that they were unable to go further, found out, after receiving a few ticklings of the stick, that they had been mistaken. The application of Golah's cudgel awakened dormant energies of which they had not deemed ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... 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

... and majestical forms; and where the reverence of forms cannot repress disorder, a rigorous and severe police, armed with every species of corporal punishment, is applied to the purpose. The whip, and the cudgel, are held up to all orders of men; they are at once employed, and they are dreaded, by every magistrate. A mandarine is whipped, for having ordered a pickpocket to receive too ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... his very best braying. The Washerman sprang up at the noise, and missing the thief, turned in a rage upon the Ass for disturbing him, and beat it with a cudgel to such an extent that the blows resolved the poor animal into the five elements of death. 'So that,' continued Karataka, 'is why I say, Let the prime minister look to him. The hunting for prey is our duty—let us stick to it, then. And this,' he said, with a meditative look, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... looked bleared and unhealthy, while his thick lips puffed out with a whistling sound at every expiration. His dirty brown coat was thrown open, and out of one of the pockets protruded a short thick cudgel with a leaden head. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... near his part, but the moment he moved he was astonishing. I depended on keeping him under my eye, and I told him to watch me like a cat. "Don't go thinking how grand you are, that way," I cried to him angrily. "If you make a blunder of it, the gentlemen will cudgel you, mark you that. Do you as I direct you. And the string, curse you. Mind your cloak!" The villain had bethought him of his flowered waistcoat, and with a comic air flung back his coat to display it. "Take your fingers out ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... at Schillingschen, trying to break loose and attack him. For answer he raised his cudgel in both hands and stood on tiptoe to get leverage. If that blow had landed it must have broken something, for he was strong as a gorilla; but somebody shouted—I recognized Fred's voice, and in another second he and Will charged ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... I thought it was that ould dog a-goin' to lape at us, so I did!" muttered the Irish lad, shaking his head, and grasping his cudgel more firmly. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... said the master, "each a different way. Go teach the common brotherhood of man. Preach Dharma, preach the law of perfect love, One law for high and low, for rich and poor. Teach all to shun the cudgel and the sword, And treat with kindness every living thing. Teach them to shun all theft and craft and greed, All bitter thoughts, and false and slanderous speech That severs friends and stirs up strife ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... with edicts pecuniary and 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 ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... started 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 ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope



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



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