Noun: knout
| Singular | knout |
| Plural | knouts |
Sample Sentences
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In Moscow, a Court carbonadoes / His ignorant serfs with the knout; / […] / But Eton has crueller terrors / Than these,—in the Windsor Express. [1832 October 27, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Derwent Coleridge, “Tales out of School. A Dropt Letter from a Lady.”, in The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, […]. In Two Volumes, 4th edition, volume II, London: E[dward] Moxon, Son & Co., […], published 1874, →OCLC, page 217:]
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Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia. [1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 5, in Vanity Fair:]
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“I don't suppose a Russian convict under the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and all our men-folk here are gilded convicts.” [1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 14:]
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Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous. [1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers:]
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The lieutenant gave him twenty strokes of the knout and stuck him in a cage for a few days till the snow was ankle deep. [2005, James Meek, The People's Act of Love, Canongate, published 2006, page 193:]
Nouns inflected like knout
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
Via French knout from Russian кнут (knut), from Old East Slavic кнутъ (knutŭ), from Old Norse knútr (“knot in a cord”). Doublet of knot, node, and nodus. See: French Nouns '
knout', Russian Nouns '
кнут', Old Norse Nouns '
knútr'.