cudgel

noun

1. A short heavy club with a rounded head used as a weapon.

   “The guard hefted his cudgel menacingly and looked at the inmates.”

   “Then they had bouts of wrestling and of cudgel play, so that every day they gained in skill and strength.”

   “So when he aroſe, he getteth him a grievous Crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into the Dungeon to them; and there firſt falls to Rateing of them, as if they were dogs: […]”

2. (figuratively)Anything that can be used as a threat to force one's will on another.

   “As above said, legibility depends also much on the design of the letter; and again I take up the cudgels against compressed type, and that especially in Roman letters: […]”

   “Mrs. Clinton’s Senate tenure, however, also demonstrated the risks of overcompensation: Not wanting to give Republicans fodder to portray her as soft on defense, she authorized President Bush to use force in Iraq and handed Mr. Obama a political cudgel to use against her.”

   “[Minnesota Senator Steve] Daines isn’t the only example of right-wing politicians who wish to wield anti-Semitism as a convenient cudgel against their political enemies, with scant if any evidence. But Montana’s vanishingly small Jewish population makes it particularly clear that this strategy has little to do with flesh-and-blood Jews at all.”

   “Mr. Cruz has been able to use his pseudo-intellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel.”

verb

1. To strike with a cudgel.

   “The officer was violently cudgeled down in the midst of the rioters.”

   “I would cudgel him like a dog if he would say so.”

   “Poets like Cudgel'd Bullys, never do / At firſt, or ſecond blow, ſubmit to you; / But will provoke you ſtill and ne're have done, / Till you are weary ſirst, with laying on: […]”

   “Aboard the barge and so off the trail, the blessing lost its puissance and the barge-tender, who coveted Guyal's rich accoutrements, sought to cudgel him with a knoblolly.”

2. To exercise (one's wits or brains) in an effort to force a memory or solution; to rack (one's mind).

   ““Most remarkable,” murmured Tarzan, cudgeling his brain for some pretext upon which to turn the subject.”

name

1. A locality in the Leeton council area, southern New South Wales, Australia.