knout

English

Etymology

Via French, from Russian кнут, from Old Norse knútr (“knot in a cord”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /naʊt/

Noun

knout (plural knouts)

1. 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.
   • 1980: Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous. — Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
   • 2005: 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. — James Meek, The People's Act of Love (Canongate 2006, p. 193)

Translations

kind of whip

Dutch: knoet (nl) Finnish: nagaikka (fi) French: knout (fr) m.

German: Knute (de) f. Russian: кнут (ru) (knut) m.

Verb

knout (third-person singular simple present knouts, present participle knouting, simple past and past participle knouted)

1. To flog or beat with a knout.

   • 1992: Different, isn’t it? It’s called kava, by the way. The Fijians make it by knouting some root or other. — Will Self, Cock and Bull

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French

Pronunciation

• Audio (Paris)

  (file)

Noun

knout m. (plural knouts)

1. knout, scourge
2. a flogging administered with such a multiple whip; a condemnation to suffer it