cudgel

A growing number of self-described creatives wield legal protections, legitimate and non, as a cudgel against others.

From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2026

The administration again turned to trade as a tool to achieve various aims and as a cudgel.

From Barron's ● Mar. 4, 2026

Nor should it be used as a cudgel, like “The Little List” in “The Mikado.”

From MarketWatch ● Dec. 8, 2025

Black abolitionists such as James Forten and Lemuel Haynes almost immediately began using the Declaration’s stirring language as a cudgel against slavery.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025

When they had called many times, at last the Gate-keeper came out, and they saw that he carried a great cudgel.

From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien

This scene emphasizes the film’s “savor every moment” theme that “We Live in Time” relentlessly cudgels viewers with for 108 endless minutes.

From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2024

The flags are tools of education for the uninitiated; they’re cudgels for progress and change; they’re signposts of welcome and reassurance.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 22, 2022

Her partner Lauren Winfield-Hill then took up the cudgels and when she was out with the score on 92, the stage was set for Heather Knight and Nat Sciver.

From BBC ● Jan. 30, 2022

As Gabler reminded me, Winchell was an early and outspoken opponent of the Nazis and their American supporters and he considered ridicule one of his cudgels, most famously in his invented insult “Ratzis”.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 7, 2019

The grounds came to life with teeming swarms of Guerrilla Shrews armed to the teeth with rapiers, cudgels and slings.

From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques

The action may not be as important as the message — that people deserved to be treated with respect and dignity — but that message is cudgeled into viewers.

From Salon ● Dec. 23, 2020

It is only with some remove that this array gives up its scatter graph specificity and can be cudgeled into a best fit line.

From Slate ● May 4, 2016

Exposition abounds, events that should be summarized drag out in tiresome scenes, what should be insinuated is instead cudgeled home.

From Slate ● Nov. 8, 2013

Holbrooke, having more or less imprisoned the delegations on the U.S. airbase at Dayton, Ohio, cudgeled them into grudging submission.

From Newsweek ● Dec. 14, 2010

To have answered “No” to these questions would have insured my death, therefore I cudgeled my brains for a fitting reply to them, well knowing what depended upon it.

From In the Days of Drake by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

Dollars & Scents In Manhattan prominent artists cudgelled their imaginations for the perfect perfume bottle.

From Time Magazine Archive

I sent my thoughts back to the morning of the fourteenth, and cudgelled my memory in the hope that Swasfield might have dropped some hint which had passed unnoticed.

From The Courtship of Morrice Buckler A Romance by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason

Kenneth went hot and cold; his brain seemed paralysed; and when the Uhlans reined up a few yards away he had cudgelled his wits in vain for something to say.

From A Hero of Li?ge by Herbert Strang

She was not an ordinary working-woman, he saw that, and cudgelled his brains to find out how she came into the country at all.

From The Sweep Winner by Nat Gould

For some time in lock-up Carstares had cudgelled his brain to think out a possible mode of escape next day, but try as he might he could light on nothing.

From The Black Moth A Romance of the XVIIIth Century by Georgette Heyer

With the return of the buyer's market, every U.S. manufacturer is cudgeling his brain?and the brains of designers?to make his product work better, feel better, look better and sell better than those of his rivals.

From Time Magazine Archive

On the other hand, their release of 214 Americans for combat would invite a propaganda cudgeling from China, ever eager to berate Moscow for betraying its allies in Hanoi.

From Time Magazine Archive

With competition in the U.S. television industry growing hotter by the day, manufacturers were cudgeling their brains for new ways to trim costs and prices.

From Time Magazine Archive

That was followed by Black Snow, a cudgeling of Stanislavsky.

From Time Magazine Archive

But inside I was fiercely cudgeling my brain.

From A Feast of Demons by Joseph Samachson

Stevens portrays Dickens at his desk, cudgelling his brains to find the name of the miser for his forthcoming tale.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 2, 2017

The contemporary guardians of culture have a habit of cudgelling anyone who might try to use culture for didactic ends or to open a subject up to a mass audience.

From BBC ● Jan. 7, 2011

Secretary Mellon wrote a "cudgelling," Are the "good times" so good?

From Time Magazine Archive

I asked myself; and it was only after cudgelling my brains for several minutes that I found I had re-invented Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.

From Dramatic Technique by George Pierce Baker

I stood for a moment irresolute, with clenched fists, cudgelling my brains and wishing that I was anywhere else upon the wide face of the earth.

From Treasure of Kings Being the Story of the Discovery of the \"Big Fish,\" or the Quest of the Greater Treasure of the Incas of Peru. by Charles Gilson