knout

English

Etymology

Via French, from Russian кнут (knut),from Old East Slavic кнутъ (knutŭ), from Old Norse knútr (“knot in a cord”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /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.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 5:

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

• Bashkir: сыбыртҡы (sïbïrtqï)
• Czech: bič (cs) m, knuta (cs) f
• Dutch: knoet (nl)
• Finnish: nagaikka (fi)
• French: knout (fr) m
• Georgian: როზგი (rozgi)

• German: Knute (de) f
• Ido: knuto (io)
• Latvian: pātaga f
• Polish: knut (pl) m, nahajka (pl) f, bicz (pl) m
• Russian: кнут (ru) m (knut), нага́йка (ru) f (nagájka), хлыст (ru) m (xlyst), бич (ru) m (bič), ро́зга (ru) m (rózga)

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, Will Self, Cock and Bull:

     Different, isn’t it? It’s called kava, by the way. The Fijians make it by knouting some root or other.

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French

Etymology

From Russian кнут (knut), from Old East Slavic кнутъ (knutŭ), from Old Norse knútr (“knot”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /knut/

• 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

Further reading

• “knout” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).