cudgel
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
-
cudgels,
present (3rd person singular)
-
cudgeled,
past participle, past
-
cudgelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
cudgeling,
present participle
-
cudgelling
present participle (especially British)
idioms
-
take up the cudgels, to come to the defense or aid of someone or something.
-
cudgel one's brains, to try to comprehend or remember.
I cudgeled my brains to recall her name.
noun
-
a short stout stick used as a weapon
-
to join in a dispute, esp to defend oneself or another
verb
-
(tr) to strike with a cudgel or similar weapon
-
to think hard about a problem
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
cudgelsimple
-
cudgelssimple
-
have cudgeledperfect
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have cudgelledperfect
-
has cudgeledperfect
-
has cudgelledperfect
-
am cudgelingprogressive
-
am cudgellingprogressive
-
are cudgelingprogressive
-
are cudgellingprogressive
-
is cudgelingprogressive
-
is cudgellingprogressive
-
have been cudgelingperfect progressive
-
have been cudgellingperfect progressive
-
has been cudgelingperfect progressive
-
has been cudgellingperfect progressive
Past
-
cudgeledsimple
-
cudgelledsimple
-
had cudgeledperfect
-
had cudgelledperfect
-
was cudgelingprogressive
-
was cudgellingprogressive
-
were cudgelingprogressive
-
were cudgellingprogressive
-
had been cudgelingperfect progressive
-
had been cudgellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cudgel
before 900; Middle English cuggel, Old English cycgel; akin to German Kugel ball
Explanation
A cudgel is a thick club or stick, used to attack or defend against an attacker. A rioting mob might be armed with cudgels. A cudgel is a rough kind of weapon — the club a police officer carries, for example, is more likely to be called a baton or a truncheon. An angry protester might wield a cudgel, or a burglar might carry one along during a robbery. The Old English root of cudgel is cycgel, "club with a rounded head," possibly from the Proto-Indo-European geu, "to curve or to bend."
Vocabulary lists containing cudgel
Twelfth Night
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The Merchant of Venice
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 9
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
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
Constance strode up and down, holding a heavy cudgel in her paws as she urged them on.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
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
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
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
Some carried cudgels, others staves; all wore pleated skirts, leathern sandals, and patchwork cloaks sewn from squares of many colors to echo the many-colored bricks of Meereen.
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
He cudgeled his brains to invent some reasonable excuse for bidding her farewell.
From The Great Mogul by Louis Tracy
Dollars & Scents In Manhattan prominent artists cudgelled their imaginations for the perfect perfume bottle.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
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 Philip Freneau
He reproached himself for suffering him to depart without discovering where he was going, and he cudgelled his brains night and day thinking how to find him again.
From Anatole France The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France
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
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
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
That was followed by Black Snow, a cudgeling of Stanislavsky.
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
One was driven by wind and sun; even the clouds took a hand in cudgeling one on.
From The Camerons of Highboro by Beth Bradford Gilchrist
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
O ho, then it seems the cudgelling and turning away were pure invention; I am glad I understand it.
From Dryden's Works Vol. 3 (of 18) Sir Martin Mar-All; The Tempest; An Evening's Love; Tyrannic Love by John Dryden
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
