Other forms: cudgels
A cudgel is a short thick stick used as a weapon. Take up a cudgel, beaten with a cudgel, cudgels and staves.
To take up the cudgels for somebody means to defend them vigorously, which is the phrase that keeps the word alive. It was the weapon of anybody who could not afford a sword.
1nouncudgelA short thick stick used as a weapon.
“The robber struck the guard with a heavy wooden cudgel.”
cudgel is a weapon.
Old English cycgel names a heavy stick, from a Germanic root meaning a knob.
Proto-Germanic
*kuggilaz — a knobbed instrument
Proto-West Germanic
*kuggil
Old English
cyċġel — a large stick, cudgel
Middle English
kuggel
English, today
cudgel
From Middle English kuggel, from Old English cyċġel (“a large stick, cudgel”), from Proto-West Germanic kuggil, from Proto-Germanic kuggilaz (“a knobbed instrument”), derivative of Proto-Germanic kuggǭ (“cog, swelling”), from Proto-Indo-European gewgʰ- (“swelling, bow”), from Proto-Indo-European gew- (“to bow, bend, arch, curve”), equivalent to cog + -el. Cognate with Middle Dutch coghele (“a stick with a rounded end”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA