The AI-powered English dictionary
plural knouts
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. quotations examples
In Moscow, a Court carbonadoes / His ignorant serfs with the knout; / […] / But Eton has crueller terrors / Than these,—in the Windsor Express.
1832 October 27, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Derwent Coleridge, “Tales out of School. A Dropt Letter from a Lady.”, in The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, published 1874, page 217
Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia.
1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 5, in Vanity Fair
Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous.
1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
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.
2005, James Meek, The People's Act of Love, Canongate, published 2006, page 193
third-person singular simple present knouts, present participle knouting, simple past and past participle knouted
To flog or beat with a knout. quotations examples
Different, isn’t it? It’s called kava, by the way. The Fijians make it by knouting some root or other.
1992, Will Self, Cock and Bull