(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.
Truncheon
Definition:
(n.) A short staff, a club; a cudgel; a shaft of a spear.
(n.) A baton, or military staff of command.
(n.) A stout stem, as of a tree, with the branches lopped off, to produce rapid growth.
(v. t.) To beat with a truncheon.
Example Sentences:
(1) In the police's own footage of what followed, shown in court, mounted officers with batons drawn can be seen charging into miners, and officers on foot beat miners about the head with truncheons.
(2) Camouflaged riot police bearing rubber truncheons hold back protesters begging the tsar for bread.
(3) People forget that you were very young and yet public enemy No 1, at the centre of incidents such as going on Bill Grundy's show and the police arriving with truncheons.
(4) I don't want to get hit in the face with a truncheon.
(5) Some 20 officers were seen brutally beating one protester with truncheons.
(6) The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons.
(7) Arthur Critchlow, who suffered a fractured skull from a police truncheon and was arrested, held on remand and prosecuted for rioting – for which he was acquitted with 94 others – told the home secretary that his community has never trusted the police since.
(8) Excerpts On police uniforms "Having gone truncheons to tasers in a generation, I have to wonder what purpose the current police service has been built for ... we are mostly approachable and pleasant people, it's just that we dress like Imperial Stormtroopers.
(9) Miners, fighting to protect jobs in pits that were subsequently closed down after the strike was defeated, were truncheoned over the head, then several spent time in prison on remand, fearing very long sentences, while awaiting trial.
(10) The worst scenes of violence in the miners' dispute broke out at the Orgreave coking plant near Rotherham, Yorkshire, yesterday with cars being burned, stones, bricks and bottles being hurled, and policemen lashing out with truncheons.
(11) Truncheon-wielding police attacked the crowds after a small number of people – provocateurs, according to the opposition – broke windows and doors in a government building.
(12) On the other side of the ticket barrier a younger man is whacked with truncheons by two policemen.
(13) Soon afterwards the police gave up, handing their helmets, truncheons and shields to the crowd.
(14) There’s a reputational risk as well as financial risk Jerry Petherick, G4S Prison officers in Oakwood are not armed with truncheons, as they often are in state-run jails, but wear body cameras attached to a strip on their right shoulder – an innovation that has proved very successful, both at de-escalation of violent incidents (“As soon as they see the camera recording they swear a few times, and they calm down,” a guard says) and when recording the effects of overdosing on black mamba.
(15) In the latest of several protests by opposition activists who say their leader will be denied a fair chance at next year’s election, police fired teargas and beat demonstrators with truncheons on Monday to stop them storming the offices of the electoral commission in Nairobi.
(16) Over Friday night police in Kiev broke up the remnants of the anti-government demonstration , swinging truncheons and injuring many, news agencies and witnesses said.
(17) Masked men with truncheons and shields were seen at the entrance to the building as a crowd of about 400 people surrounded it, while police stood nearby but did not intervene.
(18) A police procedural that is much more than the sum of its parts – The Thick of It with truncheons, basically.
(19) "We do not want to be kept quiet by a policeman's truncheon," heavyweight boxer and opposition leader Vitali Klitschko told the crowd.
(20) He said: "And the Syrians seem to be taking a different approach as well, one that makes widespread use of firearms, while the Iranians have generally armed their internal security forces with less lethal means, such as teargas, truncheons, chains, and the like, to reduce the lethality of their response, and to scare off the more faint-hearted among the opposition.