cudgel
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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
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
One wore a longsword at his hip, the other an iron cudgel.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
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
Knowledge advances through the clash of ideas; the contrarian is often the herald of a new insight; labels such as “settled” and “consensus” are the cudgels of fundamentalists.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 3, 2023
Licenses do serve as legal cudgels to protect practitioners from competition.
From New York Times ● Jan. 27, 2015
When Hunt burst onto the scene in the mid-1970s, he spoke of "taking up the cudgels" for Great Britain.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2013
Before them stood two Brazen Beasts, armed with cudgels, spears, and short swords.
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
At last the muleteer was tired, and the traders continued their journey, taking with them matter for talk about the poor fellow who had been cudgeled.
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. VIII by Various
Dollars & Scents In Manhattan prominent artists cudgelled their imaginations for the perfect perfume bottle.
From Time Magazine Archive
She simply accepted it as such, and cudgelled her brain for another more plausible solution of the mystery.
From Marjorie Dean, High School Junior by Lester, Pauline
Kenneth went hot and cold; his brain seemed paralysed; and when the Uhlans reined up a few yards away he had cudgelled his wits in vain for something to say.
From A Hero of Li?ge by Strang, Herbert
And when he reached the door, he stopped; he dared not go in, but cudgelled his brain to find some pretext, some excuse, for calling.
From San-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams by Kock, Charles Paul de
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.
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
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
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
It was our task—Edward's and mine—to make the thing "pay," and to that end both of us were cudgeling our brains by day and by night to devise means.
From Recollections of a Varied Life by Eggleston, George Cary
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
But whether it be a play of wits or of actual cudgelling, the element of superiority and inferiority is almost always there.
From The American Mind The E. T. Earl Lectures by Perry, Bliss
Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle.
From The Campaner Thal and Other Writings by Jean Paul
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.
