knout
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
Etymology
Origin of knout
1710–20; < French < Russian knut, Old Russian < Old Norse knūtr knot
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.
The feat for which the National Committee commended him proved him to be a very knout and bastinado.
From Time Magazine Archive
The new, obnoxiously corporate-modeled, self-franchising Guggenheim may run on laptops, but what it really needs is an editorial pencil -- if not a knout.
From Time Magazine Archive
Moscow's long-suffering moviegoers glowed vindictively: the managers of the city's neighborhood moviehouses were at last writhing under the official knout.
From Time Magazine Archive
The sleet whipped their shoulders like a thousand-lashed knout.
From Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns Sinking the German U-Boats by Owen, R. Emmett (Robert Emmett)
Can anyone estimate the effect upon a single human being to have known that a father, brother, son, sister, or wife has perished under the knout?
From A Short History of Russia by Parmele, Mary Platt
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.
