• IPA: /ˈkʌdʒəl/

cudgel (plural cudgels)

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

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

   • 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Chapter V

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

   • He getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel and […] falls to rating of them as if they were dogs.

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

• French: gourdin
• German: Knüppel
• Italian: bastone, randello
• Portuguese: bordão
• Russian: дуби́нка

cudgel (cudgels, present participle cudgeling; past cudgeled, past participle cudgeled)

1. To strike with a cudgel.

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

   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene iii]:

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

   • 1675, [William] Wycherley, The Country-wife, a Comedy, […], London: Printed for Thomas Dring, […], OCLC 912643989 ↗; republished London: Printed for T[homas] Dring, and sold by R. Bentley, and S. Magnes […], 1688, OCLC 7479409 ↗, prologue ↗:

     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: [...]

   • , Dying Earth

     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).