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Cudgel   Listen
noun
Cudgel  n.  A staff used in cudgel play, shorter than the quarterstaff, and wielded with one hand; hence, any heavy stick used as a weapon. "He getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel and... falls to rating of them as if they were dogs."
Cudgel play, a fight or sportive contest with cudgels.
To cross the cudgels, to forbear or give up the contest; a phrase borrowed from the practice of cudgel players, who lay one cudgel over another when the contest is ended.
To take up cudgels for, to engage in a contest in behalf of (some one or something).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cudgel" Quotes from Famous Books



... he used regularly, but sparingly, every night and morning. His dirk, or SKENE-DHU, (that is, black-knife), so worn as to be concealed beneath the arm, or by the folds of the plaid, was his only weapon, excepting the cudgel with which he directed the movements of the cattle. A Highlander was never so happy as on these occasions. There was a variety in the whole journey, which exercised the Celt's natural curiosity and love of motion. There were the constant change of place and scene, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... swore that they would get out and smash every one of the windows, and they immediately began to open the door of the coach, to put their threat into execution. Upon hearing this, I lost not a moment's time, but darted in doors, and having seized a faithful cudgel, I sallied out, with the determination of taking prisoner the first man that threw a stone, and, at all hazards, conducting him into my parlour, where he should have drank long life and success to Napoleon upon his knees, before he should have been liberated. This was the resolution I formed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... club, n. cudgel, bludgeon, truncheon, bat, mace, staff, shillalah, waddy, bandy, knobkerry; society, coterie, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... had the courage to speak up for St. Joseph's Day. He should have found it difficult to oppose Brother George, whom he liked and revered. But in this case he was wrong, and perhaps he was also wrong to make the observation of St. Joseph's Day a cudgel with ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... a crashing noise at my elbow, and glancing round saw that an old man near me had merely dropped his cane. A heavy cudgel it was that falling on the stone flagging sent a thundering reverberation through the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... very tolerable. Better than living in another epoch, for example. One hundred and fifty years ago, Contessina, in Venice, you would have been liable to arrest any day under a warrant of the Council of Ten.... And you, Dorsenne, would have been exposed to the cudgel like Monsieur de Voltaire, by some jealous lord.... And Prince d'Ardea would have run the risk of being assassinated or beheaded at each change of Pope. And I, in my quality of Protestant, should have been driven ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... amusement. They were somewhat surprised and terribly frightened on their arrival at this village, on finding themselves suddenly surrounded by about two hundred peasants armed with clubs, who fiercely demanded what they wanted, asking them if they had come, as others had before them to-day, to cudgel the men and violate the women, and ordered them to be off immediately to the boats. The luckless fornicators, confounded by this unexpected reception, were heartily glad to be allowed to sneak back to the boat in ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... F.'s generals are pugilists or cudgel-fighters, that boast of their bottom and of the claret they ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... I would have consoled her, I would have bidden her have no fear, assuring her that I would save her father. But for my own ends, I curbed the mood. I would use this as a cudgel to shatter her obstinacy, and I prayed that God might forgive me if I did aught that a gentleman should account unworthy. My need was urgent, my love all-engrossing; winning her meant winning life and happiness, and already I had sacrificed so much. Her cry rang still in my ears, "It cannot ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... and had the Pope's indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the Russian way till all the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him the only medicine in his pharmacy—kicks and oaths and blows with a cudgel of oak, which had been often the only food and drink, the only wage and reward, ever offered to him. But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances, down in the white powder of the summer ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)

... a smith, who held the second cudgel. "Do you call those canaille who feed you noble idlers by duties and taxes? Your licentiousness is the cause of our domestic discords, and noble ladies would not have so much cause to mourn if you had learned both to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... and conduct him to his task. He must expiate his offence against the Countess de Soissons, by removing that heap of stones, which were cast by his command against my palace-doors. If he prove intractable, bring him to his senses by administering a blow or two with a stout cudgel." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... buttons from the hip to the knees, and a pair of russet leather bottinas or spatterdashes. He was an active fellow, though uncommonly taciturn for an Andalusian, and strode along beside his horse, rousing him occasionally to greater speed by a loud malediction or a hearty thwack of his cudgel. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... 1st Clo. Cudgel thy brains no more about it,[15] for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say, a grave-maker, the houses that he makes, last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan, and fetch ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... Aethiop, and the Rhinoceros (which put me in mind of poor Anthony Killigrew), and the Pig-fac'd Baby, and the Cudgel play; and presently halted before a Cheap Jack, that was crying his wares in a prodigious loud ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... cried a voice which did not seem entirely unfamiliar to the shivering youth, though he could not have said exactly to whom it belonged, and was in no mood to cudgel his brains ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... funning Old Wittalls for having eaten seven large cabbages at Mr. T—-'s bee, a few days previous. His son, Sol, thought himself, as in duty bound, to take up the cudgel for ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavouring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or snails, as they did before. But one day, I took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily, at a linnet, that I knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands, ran with him in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... with the organic world, as if it were mechanical, with the sensitive, but as if it were insensate, has engendered the coarse and hard spirit of a sorcerer. The former is unable, the latter unwilling, to master the absolute pre-requisites. There is neither hope nor occasion for him "to cudgel his brains about it, he has no feeling of the business." If he do not see the necessity from without, if he have not learned the possibility from within, of interpenetration, of total intussusception, of the existence of all in each as the condition of Nature's unity ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... a steam engine. At the last moment I started to run, my legs sinking beneath me. He was upon me with my first few steps, and had me by the scruff of the neck, and brought down the cudgel over me. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... altogether indifferent to athletic exercises; for though he gave more prizes than any one else to be contended for by dramatists, flute players, harp players, and even by rhapsodists,[397] and though he delighted in all manner of hunting and cudgel playing, he never seems to have taken any interest in the contests of boxing or the pankratium.[398] When ambassadors from the King of Persia arrived in Macedonia, Philip was absent, and Alexander entertained them. His engaging manners greatly charmed them, and he became ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... La Valliee, who was before me. I would have given a great deal to hear, in solemn earnest, that she did remember the champion who, for her sake, had thrown himself before the saber of an enraged dragoon, with only a cudgel in his ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... said suddenly, "suppose we go and finish the night at that establishment; it will be far jollier, and the chief will not be obliged to cudgel his brains to remember the name of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... Lupin, "cudgel your brains: you'll never spot it! Ah, if we had asked for Gilbert's pardon only, as Clarisse wished, you might have twigged the secret! But Vaucheray, that brute of a Vaucheray, there really could not be the least bond between Mme. Mergy and him.... Aha, by Jingo, it's my turn now!... ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... ready for your gripe.—Buy what you will, you shall have credit for three days; for, were your pockets as bare as Father Fergus's, you are a Scot in London, and you will be stocked in that time." The stranger looked sternly at the waggish apprentice, and seemed to grasp his cudgel in rather a menacing fashion. "Buy physic," said the undaunted Vincent, "if you will buy neither time nor light—physic for a proud stomach, sir;—there is a 'pothecary's shop on the other side of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... thoughtfully. "But to tell the truth, Ralph, old chap, the fact which is puzzling me most of all at this moment is that extraordinary foreboding of evil which you confessed to me the day before yesterday. You had your suspicions aroused, somehow. Cudgel your brains, and think what induced that ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... Don't even box his ears in the street, but give a street-porter ten shillings to cudgel him well as he comes out of the theatre; that will ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... in front of the lens, so picking up a long cudgel I always carry afield, and going quietly to surrounding thistles, I jarred them lightly with it, and began rounding up the Hemaris family in the direction of the camera. The trick was a complete success. Soon I had an exposure on two. After they had faced the ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... terrible surprise to find himself in the hands of his old persecutors, from whom he had suffered so much, and hoped that he had been delivered; he lamented the rigour of his destiny, and trembled when he saw Bostava enter with a cudgel, a loaf, and a pitcher of water; he was almost dead at the sight of that unmerciful wretch, and the thoughts of the daily sufferings he was to endure for another year, when he was to die the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... fancy you'll agree Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; For El-n's Introduction, crabbed and dry, Like Churchill's Cudgel's {3} ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... near,—could he reach them before the dog reached him? Would they afford him a refuge or a cudgel? He threw ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... show of Punch and Judy inspires our street-urchins to have instant recourse to their fists in a dispute, after the fashion of every one of the actors in that public entertainment who gets possession of the cudgel, is open to question: it has been hinted; and angry moralists have traced the national taste for tales of crime to the smell of blood in our nursery-songs. It will at any rate hardly be questioned that it is unwholesome ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the one from the other. These dogs never barked, but howled with the weird, dismal howl of the wolf. And when they were hungry they were such dangerous, savage brutes that it was unsafe for a stranger, unless armed with a cudgel, to wander among them. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... o't. Is it like cudgel-playing or other sportful forms of bloodshed? I don't want to go, thank you, Mister Fairway, and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... but Hannah. She suffers them not to learn on the virginals,[56] because of their affinity with organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes sake, since they were reformed to the tune of a psalm. She overflows so with the bible, that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids without scripture. It is a question whether she is more troubled with the Devil, or the Devil with her: She is always challenging and daring him, and her weapon [[57]is the Practice of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... an unexpected roar. 'Darest thou come into my presence, thou base fellow, who art reputed the common scorn and contempt of all men? Were it not in mine own house I would cudgel thee with my staff for presuming to speak to me!' Stukely, his tail between his legs, goes off and complains to James. 'What should I do with him? Hang him? On my sawle, mon, if I hung all that spoke ill of thee, all the ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... will, with unquestioned sway. Why, zounds! lads, they heartily hate us all— And would rather the devil should give them a call, Than our yellow collars. And why don't they fall On us fairly at once and get rid of our lumber? They're more than our match in point of number, And carry the cudgel as we do the sword. Why can we laugh them to scorn? By my word Because we make ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... gentlemanly profession. That's the kind they mostly make parsons of now, I hear. My boy, to do anything really in that line, a man ought to have notions different from mine—rather. Why don't you advise me to set up a kindergarten? That would suit as well as chronicling ecclesiastical small beer. Cudgel your brains, and start something ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... were, whence they came, and whither they were bound; and he told her. Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without any mercy. 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 rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... and Stephen stood in the doorway. Stephen's shirt was open at the neck, his hair waved wildly over his forehead, he stood, enormous, with his legs apart, his eyes shining, blood coming from a cut in his cheek, and in one of his hands was a thick cudgel. Standing there in the doorway, he might have been some ancient ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... purpose. Here the East and the West differ diametrically. "Wounds which are given by instruments which are in one's hands by chance do not disgrace a man," says Cervantes (D. Q. i., chaps. 15), and goes on to prove that if a Zapatero (cobbler) cudgel another with his form or last, the latter must not consider himself cudgelled. The reverse in the East where a blow of a pipe stick cost Mahommed Ali Pasha's son his life: Ishmail Pasha was burned to death by Malik ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... large shrubbery, where the bushes grew up close to it; and Charlie decided that here, if anywhere, the man would take up his post. As soon, then, as he knew that the servants were clearing away the supper, he took a heavy cudgel and went out. He walked straight away from the house, and then, when he knew that his figure could no longer be seen in the twilight, he made a circuit, and, entering the shrubbery, crept along close to the wall of the Muse, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... by the rye-field, and the cow stood still almost at the same moment. It snapped at a few ears, and moved its head slowly to choose its direction. In a couple of leaps Pelle was up to it and had hold of its tail. He hit it over the nose with his cudgel, it turned quickly away from the rye, and set off at a flying pace down toward the others, while blows rained down upon its bony prominences. Every stroke echoed back from the dunes like blows upon the trunk of a tree, and made Pelle swell with pride. The cow tried to shake Pelle ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... bade him be thankful they let him go alive. So it has remained with you. Go and ask your peasants—what do they call the land, indeed? It's called "The Cudgelled Land," because it was gained by the cudgel. So you see from that, we poor folks can't bewail ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... dress, Jack tied a belt of cocoa-nut cloth round his waist, into which he thrust the axe. I was also advised to put on a belt and carry a short cudgel or bludgeon in it; for, as Jack truly remarked, the sling would be of little use if we should chance to come to close quarters with any wild animal. As for Peterkin, notwithstanding that he carried such a long, and I must add, frightful- looking spear over his shoulder, we ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... looked westward to Rome for his religion was likely to be little less of a bigot than one who looked to Mecca. So that we are not surprised to find a Venetian rule of policy recommending, for the daily allowance of these Grecian slaves, "a little bread, and a liberal application of the cudgel"! Whichever yoke were established was sure to be hated; and, therefore, it was fortunate for the honor of the Christian name, that from the year 1717 the fears and the enmity of the Greeks were to be henceforward pointed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He then replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, and saying that "he never felt more in tune for a shindy in his life, and that he wished a score of greasy cloth-dressers might beat up Moore's quarters that night," he made his exit, clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the house shake with the bang of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... maidens, and set up young couples that came together without money; but he mingled in every rustic diversion, and bore away the prize in every contest. He excelled every swain of that district in feats of strength and activity; in leaping, running, wrestling, cricket, cudgel-playing, and pitching the bar; and was confessed to be, out of sight, the best dancer at all wakes and holidays. Happy was the country-girl who could engage the young squire as her partner! To be sure, it was a comely sight for to see as how the buxom country-lasses, fresh and fragrant ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... soon be paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but Voltaire—he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded Voltaire as an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up the cudgel of the Catholic Church that had burned his books. The real fact was, the pamphlet wasn't a defense of Catholicism—it was only a drubbing of Calvinism, and the wit was too subtle for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... he had lashed should resort to violence for revenge, he carried with ostentation a sturdy cudgel. It was a formidable weapon in hands like Churchill's, and Churchill was not molested. For Churchill was a man of great physical strength. He tells the world in the portrait he painted of himself of the vastness of his bones, of the strength ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... was not by a little pruning or weeding that France, according to his original proposition, had bettered our native literature—it was by genial incubation, by acts of vital creation. She, upon our crab-tree cudgel of Agincourt, had engrafted her own peaches and apricots—our sterile thorn France had inoculated with roses. English literature was the Eve that, in the shape of a rib, had been abstracted from ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... Macaire, the king determined to refer the decision to the chance of battle; or, in other words, he gave orders for a combat between the chevalier and the dog. The lists were appointed in the Isle of Notre Dame, then an unenclosed, uninhabited place. Macaire was allowed for his weapon a great cudgel, and an empty cask was given to the dog as a place of retreat, to ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... policeman to judge when the mob is effectually suppressed, and as much his duty not to allow himself to be surprised and over-mastered by a pretended and hollow submission for the sake of seizing an advantage, as it is to inflict effectual blows of his cudgel while the row is in its more flagrant stages of development. The United States, having interfered by force to suppress a national riot, has a clear right, and a bounden duty, not to abandon the region ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... penny earned'), one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, 'Waste not, want not'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, 'Hard words break no bones'—he never fought, I see, but with a cudgel). ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... from the adjoining dance cellar, plainly indicated that one of those "bloody rows" for which Ann street is famous, had commenced. Such a scene was too much the element of Cod-mouth Pat for him to remain tranquil during its progress; with an unearthly yell he grasped a short, thick cudgel which he always carried, and leaving the "Pig Pen," plunged into the thickest of the fight. Many a black eye and broken head attested the vigor of his arm; but the glory of his achievements did not screen him from ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... opposed to those of the Cabal and differed little from those of the Country Party. He bitterly lamented the degraded situation to which England was reduced, and declared, with more energy than politeness, that his dearest wish was to cudgel the French into a proper respect for her. So little did he disguise his feelings that, at a great banquet where the most illustrious dignitaries of the State and of the Church were assembled, he not very decorously filled his glass to the confusion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... reception. This arrangement was not completed without some noise; and, as a consequence, a head appeared from beneath the archway to see what was going on outside. It was the head of the treacherous town servant; and Roller promptly dealt it so severe a blow with a stout cudgel, that its owner instantly drew back with a yell of pain. Some minutes of ominous silence then passed, in which the enemy were doubtless busy taking counsel as to what should be done next. Then they suddenly burst forth with loud shouts and wild ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... races of men. It is exactly the reverse of that of the American Indian. The Indian will murder any man who strikes him with a switch, a cowhide, or a whip, twenty years afterward, if he gets an opportunity; but readily forgets blows, however severe, inflicted on him with the fist, a cudgel, or a tomahawk. A remarkable ethnological peculiarity of the prognathous race is, that any deserved punishment, inflicted on them with a switch, cowhide, or whip, puts them into good humor with themselves and the executioner of the punishment, provided ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Lock." Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives. Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with "pious passion," pretended that his moral character was injured, and for some time declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship," and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of the meaning imputed to the first expression. Aaron Hill, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... his face; 10 In every limb a gash appears, And frequent fights retrenched his ears. As, on a time, he heard from far Two dogs engaged in noisy war, Away he scours and lays about him, Resolved no fray should be without him. Forth from his yard a tanner flies, And to the bold intruder cries: 'A cudgel shall correct your manners, Whence sprung this cursed hate to tanners? 20 While on my dog you vent your spite, Sirrah! 'tis me you dare not bite.' To see the battle thus perplexed, With equal rage a butcher vexed, Hoarse-screaming ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... made by the fox, entered the cellar. The fox, as soon as he saw him, made a spring, and was through the hole in a jiffy; and the wolf tried to follow his example, but he had eaten so much that his body was too big for the opening, and he stuck fast. Then came the peasant with a cudgel, and beat him sorely; but the fox leaped away into the forest, very glad to get rid of the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... was of sturdy buff, 305 And tho' not sword, yet cudgel-proof; Whereby 'twas fitter for his use, Who fear'd no blows, but ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... whither they would, he ran swiftly down the hill, and never stopped till he reached the castle gate. Here the porter, to whom the countess had given much gold, tried to stop him, but Bevis only knocked him down with his cudgel, and on into the hall he went, and there he beheld his mother and Sir Murdour feasting at the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... silence oppressive; he wanted to say something, no matter what, first, in order to be polite, and more especially to divert her attention from her pose. But cudgel his brain as he would, he could only think of asking: ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... mishaps such a journey involved with plaintive oaths in broken English. Mr. Wesley Thompson, projected into an unfamiliar environment and among a—to him—strange manner of men, took up his evangelistic cudgel and administered shocked reproof. It was, in a way, practice for the tasks the Methodist Board of Home Missions had appointed him to perform. But if he failed to convict these two of sin, he convinced them of discourtesy. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... made my bow to the lady and went on. Hardly had we gone two more blocks when the screaming and jabbering monkey fell upon us. Behind him on the roof of one of the houses we saw a man with a long cudgel which he shook at the monkey. I stopped the elephant again and said to the man, "Why art thou irate when the evening is so cool, ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... a bound forward, wincing with pain, for he had suddenly received a heavy blow on the back from the short cudgel the boy behind him bore, and as he turned fiercely upon him, thrusting the trowel into his basket and doubling his fist to return the blow, the first boy struck him heavily across ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... still whistling cheerfully. She peered around the tree and watched him as he retreated—a broad-shouldered man, swinging a cudgel. A hundred yards or less beyond her tree he halted, with his back to her, in the middle of the road, and stayed his whistling while he made two or three ludicrous cuts with his cudgel at the empty air. This pantomime over, he resumed ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to his ordinary dress, Jack tied a belt of cocoa-nut cloth round his waist, into which he thrust the axe. I was also advised to put on a belt and carry a short cudgel or bludgeon in it, for, as Jack truly remarked, the sling would be of little use if we should chance to come to close quarters with any wild animal. As for Peterkin, notwithstanding that he carried such a long and, I must add, frightful-looking spear over his shoulder, we could not prevail ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... sluttish, and slothful; postillions lazy, lounging, greedy, and impertinent. With this last class of delinquents after much experience he was bound to admit the following dilemma:—If you chide them for lingering, they will contrive to delay you the longer. If you chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or horsewhip (he defines the correctives, you may perceive, but leaves the expletives to our imagination) they will either disappear entirely, and leave you without resource, or they will find means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... crest was the Pirate's Tower—did not the senor remember? It was a fortification dating from the time of the corsairs. Don Jaime had scrambled up to it many times when a child, shouting like a young warrior, flourishing a cudgel of juniper wood, giving orders for the assault ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... for many generations of boys a book even more terrible than Caesar's Commentaries or the Aeneid of Virgil—the dull thud of a mysterious cudgel upon the shoulders of youth which you bore as ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... eyes off my supper-table, or by Allah I'll send you all to Jehanum. I see you are longing to put your fingers on the kid; but if you do, I've a bone-softener, which, by the blessed Prophet, shall break every bone in your three skins." So saying, the man, taking a large cudgel from the corner of the room, laid it by the dish of kid, into which he then plunged his fingers, and commenced ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... heavy stick which the mother described him as having with him when he followed Drebber. It was a stout oak cudgel." ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... hears of your calling him a cockroach on a mast, he will grind your ribs to a paste with a cudgel (os moliesen las costillas a puros palos)!" observed a pale, sharp-faced lad in a shabby doublet. The sailor who had made the comparison ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... instead of cakes, he gave him with his whip such a rude lash overthwart the legs, that the marks of the whipcord knots were apparent in them, then would have fled away; but Forgier cried out as loud as he could, O, murder, murder, help, help, help! and in the meantime threw a great cudgel after him, which he carried under his arm, wherewith he hit him in the coronal joint of his head, upon the crotaphic artery of the right side thereof, so forcibly, that Marquet fell down from his mare more like a dead than living man. Meanwhile the farmers and country swains, that were ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... beggar agreed to the bargain, and Wallace was left with the cloak, which he threw over his shoulders, and which covered him from head to foot. Pulling his cap well over his eyes, and choosing a trusty thorn cudgel from a neighbouring thicket, he went limping up to the door of the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... I cut it myself,' said Ronald, and gave me as good a cudgel as a man could wish for in ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... home. Next day he went again and found a denar, so he thought to himself: "This ant-hill is surely full of golden denars; I'll kill the serpent, and take them all for myself." So next day, while he was giving the milk to the serpent, the Brahman's son struck it on the head with a cudgel. But the serpent escaped death by the will of fate, and in a rage bit the Brahman's son with its sharp fangs, and he fell down dead at once. His people raised him a funeral pyre not far from the field and burnt ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... reputation withal. I would no more attack it than I would attack an isosceles triangle, a vacuum, or Hume's "phantasm floating in a void." My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin for my switch, a head for my cudgel—something that can smart and ache and, if so minded, fight back. I have no quarrel with abstractions; so far as I know ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... ring, and calls for a number, at pleasure, to be scored towards the game. The place is now measured by the stick with which the Cat is struck, and if the number called be found to exceed the same number of lengths of the cudgel, he is out, but if it does not, he obtains his call. Another method of playing, is to make four, six, or eight holes in the ground in a circular direction, at equal distances from each other, and at every hole is placed a player with his cudgel. One of ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin

... had great cheeks, and a big nose and flat, big nostrils and wide, and thick lips redder than steak, and great teeth yellow and ugly, and he was shod with hosen and shoon of ox-hide, bound with cords of bark up over the knee, and all about him a great cloak two-fold; and he leaned upon a grievous cudgel, and Aucassin came unto him, and was afraid when he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... picked up a rather stout cudgel which he swung a few times as if to accustom his arm to ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... as the bell finished striking eleven, the three watchers again heard through the slightly open casement the scraping noise on the left. It had been agreed that they should not move, lest the sound should be heard outside. Each grasped the stout cudgel he held in his hand, and gazed at the roof of the warehouse, which could now be plainly seen, for the moon was half full and the sky was clear. As before, the two figures went along, and this time they could clearly recognise ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... whose gettings from the flocks Began to be but few, Bethought himself to play the fox In character quite new. A shepherd's hat and coat he took, A cudgel for a crook, Nor e'en the pipe forgot: And more to seem what he was not, Himself upon his hat he wrote, "I'm Willie, shepherd of these sheep." His person thus complete, His crook in upraised feet, The impostor Willie stole upon the keep. The real Willie, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... with patents, with royal letters, with edicts pecuniary and rural, with laws, with codes, with customs; ground to the earth with imposts, with fines, with quit-rents, with mortmains, import and export duties, rents, tithes, tolls, statute-labour, and bankruptcies; cudgelled with a cudgel called a sceptre; gasping, sweating, groaning, always marching, crowned, but on their knees, rather a beast of burthen than a nation,—the French people suddenly stood upright, determined to be men, and resolved to demand an account of Providence, and to liquidate those ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... all very well for you," she declared. "You are six foot four, and you look as though you could hew your way through life with a cudgel. One could fancy you a Don Quixote amongst the shams, knocking them over like ninepins, and moving aside neither to the right nor to the left. But what is a poor weak girl to do? She wants some one, Mr. Andrew, to wield the cudgel ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... there, Frank caught sight of two men busy just before him, doing something with knives. One of the dragoons noticed it too, and he leaned forward to make a thrust at one of the two; but as he bent over his horse's neck a cudgel was raised, fell heavily across the back of his neck, and he dropped forward, and was only saved from falling ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... he heard afar Two dogs contend with noisy jar; Away he scoured to lay about him, Resolved no fray should be without him. Forth from the yard—which was a tanner's— The master rushed to teach him manners; And with the cudgel tanned his hide, And bullied him with words beside. Forth from another yard—a butcher's— The master rushed—his name was Mutchers— "Why, who the deuce are you?" he cried: "Why do you interfere? Bankside Has, at the Bull-pit, seen and known, And Hockleyhole and Marry-bone, That when we go ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... a leopardess; Ithuriel's spear glances pointless from a rhinoceros' hide. To match what is low and beat it, you must stoop, and soil your hands to cut a cudgel rough and ready. She did not see this; and seeing it, would not have lowered herself ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... and argue with me for the value of a halfpenny; other times I have known him come like a lord, and make his guineas fly about like so much dust. And once—egad! I can't help laughing—he came in the uniform of a dragoon officer, and he would needs cudgel me for letting Nicholas escape. He got me by the throat: I sung out for my very life: Jenny—she ran for the constables: the neighbours came flocking in: Alderman Gravesand brought all his posse comitatus down, for he was then on the look-out for Nicholas at the town's end: and, would ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... "Cudgel your brains, my good fellow! this is very important. Did he make no allusion to his engagement to marry Miss Silvester at Craig Fernie? Didn't he try to pacify her by an apology of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... the first time "Slochd a Chubair!" was cried as slogan in Baile Inneraora in the memory of the youngest lad out that early morning with a cudgel. The burgh settled to its Lowlandishness with something of a grudge. For long the landward clans looked upon the incomers to it as foreign and unfriendly. More than once in fierce or drunken escapades they came ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... Evander narrowly while he spoke. Skill with the rapier did not necessarily imply skill with the cudgel. He bore Evander no grudge for overcoming him at fence, but if Sir Blaise proved the better man with the batoon, there would be a kind of compensation in it. He had heard that Sir Blaise was apt at country-sports and now Sir Blaise vaunted ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Friedrich Wilhelm would have laid a stick across the shoulders of literary men had he been able to have his own way. The unfeeling old king used to go about thumping people in the streets with a big cudgel; and Carlyle rather implies that the world would not have been much the worse off if a stray literary man here and there could have been bludgeoned. The king flogged apple-women who did not knit and loafers who were ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... could have staked my life that she was clear of blame, and, though all was dark at the present, that the explanation of the mystery would show her part in these events to be both right and needful. It was true, let me cudgel my imagination as I pleased, that I could invent no theory of her relations to Northmour; but I felt none the less sure of my conclusion because it was founded on instinct in place of reason, and, as I may say, went ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... uniforms, good beer, and tobacco. Come, you will love me like your father!' he yelled at the tallest gardener, bestowing a heavy blow on the youth's shoulders with the stout cudgel which he always carried. The end of it was that Eberhard Ludwig made him a present of the Landhofmeisterin's gardeners, and the King in high good humour retired to take an hour's nap before starting to enjoy some wild-boar sticking ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... in time. Where did you come from? I never saw you before—and where did you learn to handle the cudgel ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... dangerous. He is always ready to enter into a treaty, similar to what my Lord Brougham negotiated lately with Lord Londonderry, viz. let-be for let-be—but if wounded, he is dangerous in the extreme. You should always, therefore, hunt him in couples, and have a shot in reserve, or a goodly cudgel, ready to apply to the root of his nose, where he is as vulnerable as Achilles was in the heel. Some ludicrous stories are told of bear-hunting; for Bruin is rather a humorist in his way. A friend of mine, with his surveying party, ten men in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... was in the act of turning round to defend himself, when a heavy blow with a cudgel struck him on the head, and felled him insensible to the ground. While he had been listening to the conversation, two men had come quietly up the lane, walking on the grass as he had done; and their footsteps had been unheard by ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, or to turn them upon ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... say so!" cried the Leather-bell, with a radiant face; but his joyful triumph was very speedily embittered, for when he least expected such a distinction, he became sensible that the long hazel cudgel of the village justice was unmercifully belabouring ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... attracted the eye, was the half-length of Robert M'Queen, of Braxfield, Lord Justice-Clerk. If I know gusto in painting when I see it, this canvas was painted with rare enjoyment. The tart, rosy, humorous look of the man, his nose like a cudgel, his face resting squarely on the jowl, has been caught and perpetuated with something that looks like brotherly love. A peculiarly subtle expression haunts the lower part, sensual and incredulous, like that of a man tasting good Bordeaux with ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... friend, my valiant friend, Be but so beaten, forward my brave Clients, I am yours, and you are mine again, be but so thrasht, Receive that Castigation with a cudgel. ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont

... thou art, yet for lack of proof spoke not of it to my mistress. But now thy vileness is so clearly shown that I shall in no sort conceal it; and thou, foul renegade, who hast wrought such shame in this house by the undoing of this poor wench, if it were not for the fear of God, I would e'en cudgel thee where thou liest. Get up, in the devil's name, get up, for methinks even ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... "I have charged Blainvilliers to show him a cudgel and tell him that with its aid we can make ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... abandoning science for pleasure, says to her, "Wait a moment, little one, till I come," and runs in great haste to play with the madcap, she has disappeared. She has gone into her hole, hides herself there, rolls herself up, and retires. Take the poker, take a staff, a cudgel, a cane, raise them, strike the wench, and rave at her, she moans; strap her, she moans; caress her, fondle her, she moans; kiss her, say to her, "Here, little one," she moans. Now she's cold, now she is going to die; ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... had read, as I deem, the romance of Richard Lion-Heart, another manner of man than himself. We said nought to this, not choosing to dine in such high company, but rode up under the walls of Roye, defying the Duke with open ribaldry, such as no manant could bear but he would take cudgel in hand to defend his honour. Our intent was, if the Duke accepted battle, to fight with none but him, if perchance we might take him, and hold him as hostage for the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... figure, just visible ahead, under the shadows of the houses. I quickened my pace, and found myself following a man in the dress of a peasant. Hearing my footsteps behind him, he turned and looked at me. Discovering that I was a stranger, he lifted a thick cudgel that he carried with him, shook it threateningly, and called to me in his own language (as I gathered by his actions) to stand back. A stranger in Eukhuizen at that time of night was evidently reckoned as a robber in the estimation of this citizen! I had learned on the ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... him as of vital interest and importance, though, for the life of him, he could not tell why. His sense of proportion, his social sense, his self-complacency, grew restive under the pressure of it. He told himself it wasn't of the smallest consequence, didn't matter a fig, yet continued to cudgel his memory. And, all the while, the sound of deliberate footsteps crunching over the dry rattling shingle, nearer and nearer, contributed to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... seldom came to an open quarrel with Mrs. Maynard, he considered he was placating both wife and daughter by extending this generous sum of money for their pleasures. Should they offer strenuous objections against Eleanor's plan to live in New York, he would have one cudgel, at ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... sure of that, my fine cur,' said the man, taking hold of the cudgel he had brought with him, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... Mine earnest vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you: But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute you with a cudgel. ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... and nearer, and in a few moments turned up the road leading to the back of the house. The steps of the tired brute became slower as he trotted up the avenue, although the sound of a cudgel on his ribs were plainly audible. Henri and de Lescure were standing under the garden wall, and as the animal drew near them, they saw it was a jaded donkey, ridden by a ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... precipice at an angle which commanded the descent for many hundred feet beneath. The thicket shrouding the narrow track was so dense, that nothing could be seen, even in that bright moonlight, but its glistening slope. The sounds from below rose more dearly. Thwack, thwack, fell Giovanni's cudgel on the ribs of his unfortunate mules; and we could hear them scrambling, and his hoarse voice uttering strange cries, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... of suave ambiguities and formal inanities, found vent in most vigorous and unmistakeable language; dogmatic obiter dicta came from his mouth or his pen like so many cudgel-thwacks. His nature was tense and intense, very excitable and subject to aberrant moods—and he was often the victim of a false ply, as the French would say. It cannot be gainsaid that his suspicions of ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... administer a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor. Having cut a hazel stick, you have only to lay down an old coat, name your intended victim, wish he was there, and whack away: he will howl with pain at every blow. This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale of "The Lad who went to the North Wind," with which we may conclude this discussion. The story is told, with little variation, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... was no help for it, said the Master Thief; he should go whether he would or no; and if he did not go by fair means, he would soon make him go by foul. But the man was still loath to go; so he stepped after him, and rubbed him down with a good birch cudgel, and kept on till the man came crying and sobbing inside ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... that the soul of a dog would feel pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any trouble or ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... the old Border way, Sim followed in Wat's wake, into the bog and beyond the burn. He laired to his knees, but he scarcely heeded it. There was a big man before him, a foolish, red-haired fellow, who was making great play with a cudgel. He had shivered two spears and was singing low to himself. Farther off Wat had his axe in hand and was driving the enemy to the brae. There were dead men in the moss. Sim stumbled over a soft body, and a hand caught ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... girl's advantages like a horse-couper with a horse. My face flamed that she should think me so obtuse. Now I would fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of, and then I could have beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and now, that perhaps these two had set their heads together to entrap me, and at that I sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of ill-will. At last the match-maker had a better device, which was to leave the pair of us ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... lead due north. As I wended along this I saw a man upon a donkey riding towards me. The man was commonly dressed, with a broad felt hat on his head, and a kind of satchel on his back; he seemed to be in a mighty hurry, and was every now and then belabouring the donkey with a cudgel. The donkey, however, which was a fine large creature of the silver-grey species, did not appear to sympathize at all with its rider in his desire to get on, but kept its head turned back as much as possible, moving from one side of the road to the other, and not making much forward way. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... and gapes a frightful gash.... Here Iris bends her various-painted arch, There artificial clouds in sullen order march; Here stands a crown upon a rack, and there A witch's broomstick, by great Hector's spear: Here stands a throne, and there the cynic's tub, Here Bullock's cudgel, and there Alcides' club. Beards, plumes, and spangles in confusion rise, Whilst rocks of Cornish diamonds reach the skies; Crests, corslets, all the pomp of battle join In one effulgence, one promiscuous shine. Hence all the drama's decorations rise, Hence gods ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... sure, but our good man had counted without his host. Don Porker was tired, and wouldn't budge an inch. Gudbrand talked to him, coaxed him, swore at him, but all in vain; he dragged him by the snout, he pushed him from behind, he whacked him on both his fat sides with a cudgel, but it was only labor lost, and Mr. Hog remained there in the middle of the dusty road like a stranded whale. The poor farmer was yielding to despair, when, at the very nick of time, there came along a country lad leading a she-goat, that, with ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... curses that it fed her—scarcely dry on her living lips? Who am I who speak, asses of the common? Gentilla Stanley, whose father was Pharaoh before her, and who can call up the ghosts of dead Egyptian kings, with a tent for a palace, and a cudgel for a sceptre, and the wisdom of our people at the service ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... two lads back to the yard, and he and March discussed studies, while West mooned along, whistling half aloud and thrashing the weeds and rocks with his cudgel, for the tramps refused to appear on the scene. He and Digbee went out of their way to see Joel safely to his dormitory, and then Joel accompanied them on their homeward way as far as Academy Building. There good-nights were said, and Joel, feeling ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the church than the dirty pig let fly four cracks which might have been heard from San Miniato. I cried: "Yah! pig, poltroon, donkey! is that the noise your filthy talents make?" and ran off for a cudgel. He took refuge on the instant in the mint; while I stationed myself inside my housedoor, which I left ajar, setting a boy at watch upon the street to warn me when the pig should leave the mint. After waiting some ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... on, the rest of the equipment was also being taken on board. Each member of the expedition was busily engaged in looking after the needs of his own department in the best way possible. Nor was this a question of trifles: one may cudgel one's brains endlessly in advance, but some new requirement will constantly be cropping up — until one puts a full stop to it by casting off and sailing. This event was becoming imminent with the arrival ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... cautiously fixed on the stepping-stones as she went along, when she was startled by a voice which sounded close beside her. On glancing round she saw on the opposite bank a boy standing with a huge twisted cudgel in his hand, brandishing it in a warlike attitude. He seemed to have suddenly appeared round one of the hillocks, and was now shouting excitedly, in his rough northern dialect, as he ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... now, but you should see it in winter," retorted Kate. "Great, bare, snake-like things all over the—now, don't cudgel your brains to bring 'plates' or 'crumbs' into that!" she broke off ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... strong, wherefore the battle seemed like to go all one way. But lo, as he rushed on the goodman, of a sudden he felt his feet pulled away from under him, and fell noseling to the ground; and when he would rise, lo there was on one side of him the goodman with a cudgel in his hand, and Osberne on the other, with his whittle drawn; and the lad laughed and said: "Thou has been a long while and used many words about going, so belike thou wert best tarry no longer; or wert thou thinking thou wouldst go to bed? Nay, thou hast talked long, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... so loud. I don't jest as I did a little while ago. Look yonder! Agad, if he should hear the lion roar, he'd cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don't you remember the story in AEsop's Fables, bully? Agad, there are good morals to be picked out of AEsop's Fables, let me tell you that, and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... did not work so hard in those days, and seem to have had more time and energy for ancient pastimes. Many of these old games have entirely vanished; others have left their old neighbourhoods, and received a hearty welcome all over the country. Berkshire and Somersetshire were the ancestral homes of cudgel-play, quarter-staff, and single-stick. Skating and pole-leaping were the characteristic sports of the fen country. Kent and Sussex were famous for their cricket; the northern counties for their football. Scotland rejoiced ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... mind that," said Thorbiorn; so they all went on together; and as he went Olaf caught up a crooked cudgel with which to herd his sheep; he noticed, too, that Thorbiorn and Vakr kept trying to lag behind him, and he took care that they all ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... and stumbled, though he did not fall. From this, the report went abroad that there was a sort of melee in school, and the teacher was flung upon the floor in the scuffle. By the time Samuel found himself on his back, the teacher stood over him with what the young rebel called a cugel (cudgel) in his letter, saying, ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... among the bales, and in despair the grapnel was thrown down in its place; while, in full expectation of seeing more of the smuggler crew come through the fissure, they were hurrying back to the inner cave, when Vince turned and caught up the conger club and the heavy oaken cudgel, holding both out to Mike to take one, and the latter ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... answered Tom, and strode on. Byrne watched him step out on a narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket with a pair of pistols in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel in his hand, he looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care of himself. He turned round for a moment to wave his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers. The lad in goatskin breeches looking, Byrne says, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... will be nothing, sir!" answered Jack, clutching his stout cudgel; "though to be sure the chances are that they will keep out of my way. When they get cool they will think better of it, before they will wish to encounter me. I only hope Miss Harwood's palfrey has not suffered, or her habit ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... the following history, the reader ought to know that Bull, in the main, was an honest, plain-dealing fellow, choleric, bold, and of a very unconstant temper; he dreaded not old Lewis either at backsword, single falchion, or cudgel play; but then he was very apt to quarrel with his best friends, especially if they pretended to govern him. If you flattered him, you might lead him like a child. John's temper depended very much ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... much, not out of any malice or any soreness about me, but that those of my kindred into whose hands it please God these papers do fall hereafter, may bear up stoutly in such straits; and if they be good at the cudgel, that they, looking first at their man, do give it him heartily and unsparingly, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... the ordinary exercise of a Tartar or Arab, prepares him sufficiently for war. Running, wrestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the javelin, drawing the bow, etc. are the common pastimes of those who live in the open air, and are all of them the images of war. When a Tartar or Arab actually goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... his cudgel and stood between us, threatening to knock the one dead who first offered to lift his hand against the other; but, perceiving no disposition in any of us to separate, he drove me home before him like a bullock, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... mere ridicule of Richardson was insufficient to sustain the interest of any serious effort, and, besides, must have been secretly conscious that the "Pamela" characteristics of his hero were artistically irreconcilable with the personal bravery and cudgel-playing attributes with which he had endowed him. Add to this that the immortal Mrs. Slipslop and Parson Adams—the latter especially—had begun to acquire an importance with their creator for which the initial scheme had by no means ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson



Words linked to "Cudgel" :   shillelagh, fustigate, club, shillalah, hit



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