cudgel

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

“Because people will say, ‘Well, this is just basically a cudgel, there’s not an issue at all, and it’s just being exploited.’”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2025

One wore a longsword at his hip, the other an iron cudgel.

From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

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

While many ad-blocking apps are now basically cudgels that obstruct all ads, he said he expected there would later be “customizable, free ad blockers with a feature that offers a whitelist for some ads.”

From New York Times ● Sep. 18, 2015

Carragher takes up the cudgels: “We try to have a theme in every show,” he explains.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 23, 2014

The knights of the Round Table were sent out as a measure against Fort Mayne, and the choleric barons who lived by Fort Mayne took the cudgels with the ferocity of despair.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

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

Not to have been kicked," it should have been said, "is gain; not to have been cudgeled, is for you a ground of endless gratitude.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 by Various

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

From Time Magazine Archive

And when he reached the door, he stopped; he dared not go in, but cudgelled his brain to find some pretext, some excuse, for calling.

From San-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams by Charles Paul de Kock

Even the despised and cudgelled ass had a share in his protection.

From Spanish Highways and Byways by Katharine Lee Bates

Eric, really interested in the baseball problem, cudgelled his brains, but could find no way out.

From The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

She simply accepted it as such, and cudgelled her brain for another more plausible solution of the mystery.

From Marjorie Dean, High School Junior by Pauline Lester

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

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

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

But the others, mostly lads capable of real mental exercise, were all cudgeling their brains.

From Radio Boys Loyalty Bill Brown Listens In by Wayne Whipple

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 Robert Louis Stevenson

When I refused everything, he sat down heavily on the sofa, frowning, and angrily cudgelling his wits for something to say—in vain.

From The White Peacock by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence