knout

(nout)

A leather scourge used for flogging.

tr.v. knout·ed, knout·ing, knouts

To flog with a knout.

[French, from Russian knut, from Old Russian knutŭ, from Old Norse knūtr, knot in cord.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

knout

(naʊt)

a stout whip used formerly in Russia as an instrument of punishment

[C17: from Russian knut, of Scandinavian origin; compare Old Norse knūtr knot]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

knout

(naʊt)
n.

1. a whip with a lash of leather thongs, formerly used in Russia for flogging criminals.

v.t.

2. to flog with the knout.

[1710–20; < French < Russian knut, Old Russian]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Noun

knout - a whip with a lash of leather thongs twisted with wire; used for flogging prisoners

whip - an instrument with a handle and a flexible lash that is used for whipping

Translations

knut

knout

[naʊt] N → knut m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

knout

n → Knute f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

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References in classic literature ?

I believe that he keeps a little private knout at home for his wife and children.

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Pott's door, which door itself opened, and displayed the great Pott accoutred as a Russian officer of justice, with a tremendous knout in his hand--tastefully typical of the stern and mighty power of the Eatanswill GAZETTE, and the fearful lashings it bestowed on public offenders.

Alas for the knout! The nervous arm that wielded it, with such a gigantic force on public characters, was paralysed beneath the glance of the imperious Mrs.

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Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia.

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'These young fellows nowadays want someone standing over them with a knout all the time.

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The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses.

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We all profess the Christian law of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches- but yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to it, astonished him each time as if it were something new.

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Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout? I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide.

'Whose cry is Liberty, and Fatherland': Kossuth, Garibaldi and European Nationalism in Scottish Political Poetry

(156) Ivan essentially yokes these small "creature[s]" to his Nekrasov allusion, the poem about the horse, burdened "with too heavy a load" and "stuck in the mud," and the peasant who flogs her repeatedly on her "meek" eyes "with a knout" until she is left trembling "all over." (157) Ivan's tot, beating her chest with her tiny fist and weeping "meek" tears akin to that "defenseless" nag, speaks in the idiom of kinesics from a context resembling seligman's "learned helpless" laboratory.

DOSTOEVSKY AS JUVENILE JUSTICE ADVOCATE AND PROGENITOR OF THERAPEUTIC JURISPRUDENCE

(57) The suspects were tortured several times a day, and at times, the number of blows with the knout exceeded the norms in the Petrine era, which for peasants consisted of 15 to 35-40 blows at a time.

Proof of sincere love for the tsar: popular monarchism in the age of Peter the Great

Three times Muscovy flayed my back with the knout. Once they had me on the road to Siberia.

Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855): Book Ten Emigration * Jacek

Is it the Russian State, to whom the knout, the gibbet, and Siberia are the sole means of persuasion?