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
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 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
Spanberg, the other Dane, with his brutal tongue and constant recourse to the knout, who had gone to St. Petersburg to report on Japan, they cordially hated.
From Vikings of the Pacific The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
Elizabeth and the Exiles has formed part of her reading, and Madame de Roni will dream every night of the knout till she reaches her dear native land.—But now to business.
From Jack Hinton The Guardsman by Charles James Lever
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.
