cudgel

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

From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2026

Another was to give investors such as government pension funds a cudgel to pressure companies into reducing CO2 emissions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 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

The figure relaxed, and the cudgel dropped to grate metallically against a stone.

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

Knowledge advances through the clash of ideas; the contrarian is often the herald of a new insight; labels such as “settled” and “consensus” are the cudgels of fundamentalists.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 3, 2023

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

Their stand-up turns jokes into cudgels to break down racism, homophobia and systemic discrimination, but they also tend to be more comfortable than many comics in delaying punch lines in service of an argument.

From New York Times ● Jun. 26, 2018

The man was ripped, and various axes and cudgels dangled off his many belts and sashes.

From "Shadowshaper" by Daniel José Older

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

At last the muleteer was tired, and the traders continued their journey, taking with them matter for talk about the poor fellow who had been cudgeled.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. VIII by Various

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

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

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 Jules Michelet

He spoke more slowly now, as if he cudgelled his brain for the most biting sarcasm, the most unbearable insolence.

From No Clue A Mystery Story by James Hay

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

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 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

Then Shelby remounted Shashai, and leading Star, the odd procession started back, Shelby cudgeling his brain to devise a way of getting the romantic maiden in as secretly as he had promised.

From Peggy Stewart at School by Gabrielle E. (Gabrielle Emilie) Jackson

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

Well," said Euchar, "if you had been bowed out of their company, or even come in for a little touch of cudgelling, wouldn't it all have been a part of the mutual interdependence of things?

From The Serapion Brethren. Vol. II by Ernst Theordor Wilhelm Hoffmann

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