cudgel

But they’re part of a growing number of self-described creatives who 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

Married to a cudgel, married to a pestle, Be faithful to it.

From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston

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

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

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

From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2015

Within were three long hooded cloaks made from myriad small squares of cloth sewn together, three cudgels, three shortswords, three masks of polished brass.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

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

Felix cudgeled his brains, endeavoring to recall anything he had ever heard or read covering this strange ground.

From Rocky Mountain Boys Camping in the Big Game Country by St. George Rathborne

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

From Time Magazine Archive

He cudgelled his brains how to avoid the consequences of his indiscretion.

From Bindle Some Chapters in the Life of Joseph Bindle by Herbert George Jenkins

Evidently the young man had been thinking of anything but the countersign, for when he was halted and asked to give the countersign words he cudgelled his brain in vain.

From Historic Shrines of America Being the Story of One Hundred and Twenty Historic Buildings and the Pioneers Who Made Them Notable by John T. (John Thomson) Faris

Capuzzi fell heavily to the ground and Pitichinaccio along with him, both raising a shrill piercing cry of distress and fear, like that of a whole troop of cudgelled asses.

From Weird Tales. Vol. I by E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann

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

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

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

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

It is interesting to see how Marcus Aurelius in the year One Hundred Sixty-four was cudgeling his brains concerning problems about which we yet argue and grow red in the face.

From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 by Elbert Hubbard

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

Until he became too fatigued to suffer his mind to dwell upon anything but his own discomfort, Sellon had been cudgelling his brains to solve the mystery of the resuscitated document, but in vain.

From Renshaw Fanning's Quest A Tale of the High Veldt by Bertram Mitford