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

Now I saw the mayor heading back to the wagon accompanied by a tall fellow carrying a long cudgel, the constable unless I missed my guess.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

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

Larson has explained, is that the framers were concerned that accusations of treason not be transformed into criminal cudgels against political enemies.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 5, 2018

Battle is waged with cudgels gripped by velvet gloves in the strange world of football.

From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2015

Licenses do serve as legal cudgels to protect practitioners from competition.

From New York Times ● Jan. 27, 2015

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

Why should I cudgel my brains with your new music when I have cudgeled them cruelly with the old?

From Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays by Various

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

From Time Magazine Archive

And though she cudgelled her brains, she could not come at it.

From The Rainbow by Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)

In those days of duelling a man who let himself be cudgelled with impunity lost ground with the public, and sank in the esteem of the women.

From La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages by Michelet, Jules

He fought with Tim Tearcoat, and cudgelled with Ben, And wrestled with Sampson—all quarrelsome men;— I was sorry to see him thus wasting his force On fellows who kicked with the heels of a horse.

From The Poems of Philip Freneau, Volume I (of III) by Freneau, Philip

Charley cudgelled his brains continually, but for once his imagination failed him.

From Tales of the Fish Patrol by Varian, George

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

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

Mr. Lippmann is mistaken when he uses the map as a means of cudgeling our academic system of education.

From Time Magazine Archive

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

From Time Magazine Archive

She lay awake nearly all night, vainly cudgeling her brains for some plan by which to deliver her father from his confinement.

From St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 Scribner's Illustrated by Dodge, Mary Mapes

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

There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgelling.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) Juvenilia and Other Papers by Stevenson, Robert Louis

And there I was, cudgelling my muddy brains for some excuse, because I thought you were staying in the town.”

From Harley Greenoak's Charge by Mitford, Bertram