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.
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
The feat for which the National Committee commended him proved him to be a very knout and bastinado.
From Time Magazine Archive
The danger was not death, but a protracted march to Siberia, or the knout, and imprisonment—inflictions far more trying than wounds or death.
From Fred Markham in Russia The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar by Landells, R. T.
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)
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.
