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Cudgel vs Quarterstaff - What's the difference?

cudgel | quarterstaff | Synonyms |

As nouns the difference between cudgel and quarterstaff

is that cudgel is a short heavy club with a rounded head used as a weapon while quarterstaff is a wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.

As a verb cudgel

is to strike with a cudgel.

cudgel

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A short heavy club with a rounded head used as a weapon.
  • The guard hefted his cudgel menacingly and looked at the inmates. The threat to swing glinted in his eye.
  • * 1883 , (Howard Pyle), (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood)
  • Then they had bouts of wrestling and of cudgel play, so that every day they gained in skill and strength.
  • * Bunyan
  • He getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel and falls to rating of them as if they were dogs.

    Synonyms

    * club * singlestick

    Verb

  • To strike with a cudgel.
  • The officer was violently cudgeled down in the midst of the rioters, with his own beatstick no less.
  • * Shakespeare
  • I would cudgel him like a dog if he would say so.
  • To exercise (one's wits or brains).
  • Anagrams

    *

    quarterstaff

    Alternative forms

    *quarter-staff *quarter staff

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • A wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.
  • * 1883 , Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood :
  • First, several couples stood forth at quarterstaff , and so shrewd were they at the game, and so quickly did they give stroke and parry, that
  • Fighting or exercise with the quarterstaff.
  • He was very adept at quarterstaff .

    Usage notes

    An attestation from 1590 of a quarter Ashe staffe'' shows that the "quarter" was an apposition and could still be detached (Richard Harvey, ''Plaine Perceuall the peace-maker of England , cited after the OED). Joseph Swetnam (1615) uses "quarterstaff" in the same sense in which George Silver (1599) had used "short staff", viz. for the staff between about 2 and 2.5 meters in length, as opposed to the "long staff" of a length exceeding 3 meters. Contemporary use of the word disappears during the 18th century, and beginning with 19th-century Romanticism the word is mostly limited to antiquarian or historical usage.

    Synonyms

    * (l) (a Japanese quarterstaff) *short staff