Meaning of Knout | Babel Free

Definitions

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.

Equivalents

Examples

“In Moscow, a Court carbonadoes / His ignorant serfs with the knout; / […] / But Eton has crueller terrors / Than these,—in the Windsor Express.”

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

““I don't suppose a Russian convict under the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and all our men-folk here are gilded convicts.””

“Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous.”

“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.”

CEFR level