cudgel – English noun declension

English noun forms of cudgel

Noun: cudgel
Singularcudgel
Pluralcudgels

Sample Sentences

  • The guard hefted his cudgel menacingly and looked at the inmates.
  • Then they had bouts of wrestling and of cudgel play, so that every day they gained in skill and strength. [1883, Howard Pyle, “Robin Hood Turns Butcher”, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […], →OCLC, part second, page 48:]
  • So when he aroſe, he getteth him a grievous Crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into the Dungeon to them; and there firſt falls to Rateing of them, as if they were dogs: […] [1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: […] Nath[aniel] Ponder […], →OCLC, page 114:]
  • As above said, legibility depends also much on the design of the letter; and again I take up the cudgels against compressed type, and that especially in Roman letters: […] [1893, William Morris, The Ideal Book, published 1908:]
  • Mrs. Clinton’s Senate tenure, however, also demonstrated the risks of overcompensation: Not wanting to give Republicans fodder to portray her as soft on defense, she authorized President Bush to use force in Iraq and handed Mr. Obama a political cudgel to use against her. [2015 April 15, Jonathan Martin, “For a Clinton, It’s Not Hard to Be Humble in an Effort to Regain Power”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 08 Nov 2020:]
  • [Montana Senator Steve] Daines isn’t the only example of right-wing politicians who wish to wield anti-Semitism as a convenient cudgel against their political enemies, with scant if any evidence. But Montana’s vanishingly small Jewish population makes it particularly clear that this strategy has little to do with flesh-and-blood Jews at all. [2019 July 17, Talia Lavin, “When Non-Jews Wield Anti-Semitism as Political Shield”, in GQ, archived from the original on 13 Mar 2021:]
  • Mr. Cruz has been able to use his pseudo-intellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel. [2021 January 11, Mimi Swartz, “Never Forget What Ted Cruz Did”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2021:]

Etymology

From Middle English kuggel, from Old English cyċġel (“a large stick, cudgel”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuggil, from Proto-Germanic *kuggilaz (“a knobbed instrument”), derivative of Proto-Germanic *kuggǭ (“cog, swelling”), from Proto-Indo-European *gewgʰ- (“swelling, bow”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to bow, bend, arch, curve”), equivalent to cog + -el (diminutive suffix). Cognate with Middle Dutch coghele (“a stick with a rounded end”). See: Middle English Nouns 'kuggel', Old English Nouns 'cyċġel'.

Verbs referencing "cudgel"

German Nouns Kugel, English Nouns cog, Dutch Nouns kogel, Danish Nouns kugle.