[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To beat or thrash with a cudgel.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., III. iii. 159. He call’d you Iacke, and said hee would cudgell you.
1679. Wood, Life (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), II. 473. John Dryeden the poet … was about 8 at night soundly cudgell’d by 3 men.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 221. Sometimes he was knocked down: sometimes he was cudgelled.
b. fig.
1602. Shaks., Ham., V. i. 63. Cudgell thy brains no more about it.
1679–1714. Burnet, Hist. Ref. (1715), Pref. To terrifie the Court of Rome, and cudgel the Pope into a Compliance with what he desired.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, xv. When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow besides borrow and to-morrow.
1857. De Quincey, China, Wks. 1871, XVI. 254. Luckily we have … cudgelled them out of this hellish doctrine.
2. intr. To play cudgels for: see CUDGEL sb. 1 b.
1840. Thackeray, Catherine, xii. Monsieur Figue gives a hat to be cudgelled for.
