cudgel

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

None of which made it a less effective cudgel.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2025

Constance scanned the report and picked up her heavy cudgel.

From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques

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

These days, when a proposal leads people to lay down their partisan cudgels and cooperate, it must be an exceptionally good idea.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 6, 2018

So, what is putting people off taking up the cudgels in Ms Thomas' absence?

From BBC ● May 2, 2017

While many ad-blocking apps are now basically cudgels that obstruct all ads, he said he expected there would later be “customizable, free ad blockers with a feature that offers a whitelist for some ads.”

From New York Times ● Sep. 18, 2015

Even the dryads were armed with bows, and the satyrs trotted around with wooden cudgels and shields made of rough tree bark.

From "The Battle of the Labyrinth" by Rick Riordan

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

Her eyes moved as she cudgeled her brain.

From Apron-Strings by Eleanor Gates

Dollars & Scents In Manhattan prominent artists cudgelled their imaginations for the perfect perfume bottle.

From Time Magazine Archive

Since the gun episode, resulting so signally in the biter being bit, and bit hard, Sonnenberg had cudgelled his crafty and scheming brain to hit upon a plan, but hitherto in vain.

From A Veldt Official A Novel of Circumstance by Bertram Mitford

Evidently the young man had been thinking of anything but the countersign, for when he was halted and asked to give the countersign words he cudgelled his brain in vain.

From Historic Shrines of America Being the Story of One Hundred and Twenty Historic Buildings and the Pioneers Who Made Them Notable by John T. (John Thomson) Faris

"An ye mean this lad who hath so well cudgelled Black Dick," said Coulter, "I dare be sworn he is not a sneak to turn informer upon us."

From William Shakespeare as he lived. An Historical Tale by Henry Curling

His mother fled the house, and the rabble entered, and so cudgelled Pablo that he was fain to return to the inn; and, after being groomed, he allowed the archbishop to mount him.

From Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes Spanish and Portuguese Folklore by Various

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

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 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

They were silent a while, their faces grave and intent, cudgeling their brains for some signal exploit with which to open hostilities.

From The Terrible Twins by Edgar Jepson

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

I waited, straining my ears to hear the little stairway creak behind the door at my back, and cudgelling my brains to think what I should do.

From The Courtship of Morrice Buckler A Romance by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason

They walked away, the little woman still sighing, her escort cudgelling his brain to think of something to say to console her.

From San-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams by Charles Paul de Kock