knout

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Pronunciation

• IPA: /naʊt/
• (Canada) IPA: [nʌʊt]

Noun

knout (plural knouts)

1. A leather scourge (multi-tail whip), in the severe version known as 'great knout' with metal weights on each tongue, notoriously used in imperial Russia.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 5:

     Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia.

   • 1980: Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous. — Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
   • 2005: The lieutenant gave him twenty strokes of the knout and stuck him in a cage for a few days till the snow was ankle deep. — James Meek, The People's Act of Love (Canongate 2006, p. 193)

Translations

• French: knout
• German: Knute
• Russian: кнут

Verb

knout (knouts, present participle knouting; past and past participle knouted)

1. To flog or beat with a knout.
   • 1992, Will Self, Cock and Bull:

     Different, isn’t it? It’s called kava, by the way. The Fijians make it by knouting some root or other.

Synonyms

• (to whip or scourge) Thesaurus:whip

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