What's the difference between bludgeon and cudgel?

Bludgeon


Definition:

  • (n.) A short stick, with one end loaded, or thicker and heavier that the other, used as an offensive weapon.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Yet, while the source material isn't quite as sanguinary as its Japanese cousin, there are certainly enough stabbings, bludgeonings and deaths to mean that making a loyal adaptation that the core fanbase could actually go and watch was something of a challenge.
  • (2) Rivett was found bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe at the countess’s home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street on the evening of 7 November 1974.
  • (3) What’s troubling isn’t the premise that a straight man might be stricken by rape-anxiety before going to jail, but the crass and bludgeoning way it’s handled,” he said.
  • (4) He can't quite bludgeon his way through, Taiwo booting it behind for a corner.
  • (5) While raising concerns about each other's possession of the disease, they have worked together to bludgeon the other members of the World Health Organisation, which have pressed them to destroy their stocks.
  • (6) For a moment I think some jealous caveman has bludgeoned me with a club but, from my prone position, I can see that there is a nasty rock protrusion at head height.
  • (7) He was a worldly man of great personal charm who loved friendship and conversation, enjoyed intellectual disagreement and sought to persuade not to bludgeon.
  • (8) "Poisoning, shooting or bludgeoning [greys] to death in a sack is irrational, inhumane and doomed to fail," said the charity, who thinks the public has been fed the "emotive anthropomorphism" of Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin too often by conservationists seeking to bring back reds.
  • (9) In January, the Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death after he was pictured on the front of the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone alongside the headline Hang Them.
  • (10) He yells to his wife: "Get away, hide," but you bludgeon him unconscious and then you go for her.
  • (11) Photograph: Guardian The news that the billionaire businessman might head to the land of moules-frites generated headlines, insults, a lawsuit and divided France roughly down right-left lines: those who saw Arnault as a symbol of the "selfish rich" and those who saw him as a standard bearer for the tax-bludgeoned entrepreneur trying to create jobs and wealth.
  • (12) I am arresting you, Humphrey, for this violent bludgeoning as you are the only person with a hat but no specs."
  • (13) I feel bludgeoned by a past I only imagine I missed.
  • (14) And while their shows are exceptionally loud – earplugs are given out ("it is not cool to damage your senses") – this is no heavy-metal bludgeoning.
  • (15) In Shujai’iya, the area of Gaza City that saw some of the worst fighting as Israeli tanks and bulldozers bludgeoned through the neighbourhood, the destruction was a vision of hell.
  • (16) McCluskey’s one-time flatmate, the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, had been hoping for a smoother transition, but McCluskey called the wave of resignations by Labour frontbenchers “an attempted political lynching, designed to bully and bludgeon Jeremy Corbyn, this deeply decent and kind man, out of the job he was elected to do”.
  • (17) Our rulers wield a moral club with which they wish to bludgeon us into accepting that they are on our side.
  • (18) Rooney’s jubilation manifested itself in the leaping somersault that we first saw from him when he was bludgeoning defences at Euro 2004.
  • (19) A year before Shepard’s murder, a 15-year-old named Daphne Sulk was found dead outside Laramie – nude, bludgeoned, and stabbed 17 times.
  • (20) In the Guardian's first review of the film , Xan Brooks described it as "a bruising, gruelling experience" that "bludgeons the body and tenderises the soul.

Cudgel


Definition:

  • (n.) A staff used in cudgel play, shorter than the quarterstaff, and wielded with one hand; hence, any heavy stick used as a weapon.
  • (v. t.) To beat with a cudgel.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He said the project was neither “a silver bullet for the economy” nor “an express lane to climate disaster”, and said it was time for both sides to stop using the argument over Keystone as a political cudgel.
  • (2) The result of the French election shows that François Hollande is now being expected to take up the cudgels.
  • (3) The cause of the injury was broken glass--4, cudgel--4, industrial metal--1, unknown--1.
  • (4) Their fans took up cudgels on either side, though the deepest desire was for the rivals to appear together.
  • (5) But the rise of the Islamic State (Isis), the terrorist attack in Paris and a Republican-led Congress increasingly willing to use those phenomena as a cudgel against privacy advocates have complicated congressional attitudes to mass surveillance.
  • (6) Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard take up cudgels again in ABC documentary Read more Garrett says in the book that supporting Rudd in light of his “trail of destruction and abandoned policy” was his biggest mistake in nearly 10 years in parliament.
  • (7) Except that, in Loznitsa's version, the wizard is a disgraced former soldier, the siren a child prostitute and the trolls a trio of gnarled brigands who cook potatoes at a forest campfire and cudgel anyone who draws too close.
  • (8) No one escaped his cudgel as he scored all round the ground, cutting, pulling, driving and, well, just belting the daylights out of the ball, with 17 fours and two sixes.
  • (9) But they, along with President Obama and gun control campaigners and pressure groups, will now attempt to wield this failure as a cudgel against incumbent, no-voting senators through the next election, hoping to bring about a more favorable climate in 2015.
  • (10) But some other MPs believe Abbott will actually consolidate his position after the dramas of the week because the various alternatives to the prime minister have now picked up the cudgels against one another.
  • (11) The jut of beard, the ringed fingers, the walking stick one feels he could use as a wand or a cudgel at any moment: he looks like Hagrid's wayward brother or Gandalf's louche cousin.
  • (12) But the pinpricks tiny sites can inflict on a target do not begin to match the cudgel blows the mass media of the 20th century could deliver.
  • (13) Four states voted on the question of gay marriage last Tuesday, and in each the pro-marriage equality side won, suggesting that an issue which eight years ago served as a cudgel for Republicans to push so-called "cultural" voters to the polls is no longer a political asset.
  • (14) Will of the people!”: we hear it from Labour too (though not its former leader, in his latest estimable effort ), less democratic than fascistic, cudgel for anyone who dares suggest we betray not just Britain – never mind Ireland – but Europe and internationalism.
  • (15) His successor, Dame Sally Davies, took up the cudgels in 2013, with David Cameron calling for global action the following year.
  • (16) Professor Goldworth takes up the cudgels in defence of the contemporary moral philosopher, who, he says, should indeed have a role in helping doctors to make clinical decisions based on philosophical theory; Mr. Thompson in his reply says that Professor Goldworth has misinterpreted his earlier argument.
  • (17) In any case, she expresses no desire to lay down the cudgels and become a confidante.
  • (18) A number of backbenchers, including the Liberal Democrat elder statesman Sir Menzies Campbell, took up the cudgels.
  • (19) Religious freedom “is now predominantly used by religious majorities as a cudgel to undermine our existing civil rights law”, Talbot said.
  • (20) He told CNN that Page was "a very kind, very smart individual" but even then had taken up the white supremacist cudgel.