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
-
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:
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
But as it was a personal choice between learning cudgel and wrestling from Constance or quarter staff from Matthias, to a mouse they had opted for the latter.
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
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
Carragher takes up the cudgels: “We try to have a theme in every show,” he explains.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 23, 2014
Watchmen were much in evidence, moving in pairs through the alleys in their gold cloaks and shirts of black ringmail, iron cudgels never far from their hands.
From "A Clash of Kings" 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 wits, but to no avail; evidently the door was an impassable barrier.
From The Gray Phantom's Return by Herman Landon
Dollars & Scents In Manhattan prominent artists cudgelled their imaginations for the perfect perfume bottle.
From Time Magazine Archive
She cudgelled her brains to devise some means of getting the better of her captives.
From The Mystery of the Green Ray by William Le Queux
That was my idea, and for several days I cudgelled my brain to find among my models one that would, physically and morally, represent all this.
From An Englishman in Paris Notes and Recollections by Albert D.
Harper cudgelled his still dazed brain, and finding none, shook his head.
From The Black Moth A Romance of the XVIIIth Century by Georgette Heyer
And though she cudgelled her brains, she could not come at it.
From The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
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
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
Eos, her face tear-streaked, went slowly down the endless line of men, examining each one carefully and cudgeling her memory to decide which one she had loved the very most.
From Daughter of the Night by Richard S. Shaver
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
He sat, thinking of this, cudgelling his brains for some contrivance by which he and Marion Fay might be brought together again with the least possible delay.
From Marion Fay by Anthony Trollope
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
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.
