Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A leather scourge used for flogging.
- transitive verb To flog with a knout.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A whip or scourge formerly used in Russia for the punishment of the worst criminals.
- To punish with the knout or whip.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A kind of whip for flogging criminals, formerly much used in Russia. The lash is a tapering bundle of leather thongs twisted with wire and hardened, so that it mangles the flesh.
- transitive verb To punish with the knout.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A leather
scourge (multi-tailwhip ), in the severe version known as 'great knout' with metal weights on each tongue, notoriously used in imperial Russia. - verb To
flog orbeat with a knout.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a whip with a lash of leather thongs twisted with wire; used for flogging prisoners
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Like Catharine II., her envied contemporary, she consulted no ties of nature in the disposal of her children, -- a system more in character where the knout is the logician than among nations boasting higher civilization: indeed her rivalry with Catharine even made her grossly neglect their education.
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Like Catharine II., her envied contemporary, she consulted no ties of nature in the disposal of her children, -- a system more in character where the knout is the logician than among nations boasting higher civilization: indeed her rivalry with Catharine even made her grossly neglect their education.
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Like Catharine II., her envied contemporary, she consulted no ties of nature in the disposal of her children, -- a system more in character where the knout is the logician than among nations boasting higher civilization: indeed her rivalry with Catharine even made her grossly neglect their education.
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When Jason Philip came back from the inn, he said: “To believe that people can be ruled without the knout is a fatal delusion.”
Gänsemännchen. English Jakob Wassermann 1903
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You peasants are getting too saucy since you ceased to be serfs, and the knout is the best school for you to learn politics in.
Vera or, The Nihilists Oscar Wilde 1877
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The knout was a large and strong whip, the lash of which consists of a tough, thick thong of leather, prepared in a particular way, so as greatly to increase the intensity of the agony caused by the blows inflicted with it.
Peter the Great Jacob Abbott 1841
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The knout is a terrible i fli6tion ufed in this country.
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"knout" partakes a good deal of this same character of suffering.
Oak Openings James Fenimore Cooper 1820
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He said that one of his purposes in staying in town, was to 'knout' me every day ” didn't he?
The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Browning, Robert, 1812-1889 1898
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Naass swept the blanket from his shoulders, disclosing the gnarled and twisted flesh, marked with the unmistakable striations of the knout.
reesetee commented on the word knout
Ouch.
March 30, 2007
rolig commented on the word knout
From the Russian word кнут – knut.
January 3, 2008
bilby commented on the word knout
"Each packet held three photographs of women, women bound, women gagged, women lashed to bedsteads, to racks, with whips, scourges, knouts, by other women. Their eyes were always turned to the camera, empty, meek, expressionless, like the eyes of laden donkeys."
- 'A Needle For Your Pornograph', Germaine Greer in Sunday Times, 1971.
April 6, 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word knout
"But in The Gulag Archipelago, I had read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's musings on the proper memorial for the forced labor camps of Stalin's time: "I visualize…," Solzhenitsyn wrote, "somewhere on a high point in the Kolyma, a most enormous Stalin, just such a size as he himself dreamed of, with mustaches many feet long and the bared fangs of a camp commandant, one hand holding the reins and the other wielding a knout with which to beat his team of hundreds of people harnessed in fives and all pulling hard. This would also be a fine sight on the edge of the Chukchi Peninsula next to the Bering Strait.""
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 84
February 8, 2011