bludgeon
verbEtymology First attested in 1730. Origin uncertain, perhaps of Cornish origin (recorded as blogon c. 1450) or from Middle French bougeon, a diminutive of bouge (“club, stick”).
1
To strike or hit with something hard, usually on the head; to club.
- The apprehended rioter was bludgeoned to death.
- They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God.1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168:
1 more example
- Thomas Briggs, a senior bank clerk in the City, lived in Hackney, and on 9 July 1864 he was returning there by train from Fenchurch Street after a Saturday spent at work when he was bludgeoned to death in a first-class carriage, probably by a young German tailor named Franz Müller. (Let's hope it was Müller, because he was hanged for it.) And so Briggs was an all-round pioneer: an early commuter and the very first victim of a railway murder.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 16–17:
2
To coerce someone, as if with a bludgeon.
- Their favorite method was bludgeoning us with the same old arguments in favor of their opinions.
- Gianna Parasini: You've never worked in the corporate world, have you, Commander? You can't bludgeon through bureaucracy. Shepard: I can bludgeon pretty hard.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Noveria:
- Derived terms
- bludgeoner, unbludgeoned