Also fisty- [f. FIST sb.1 + CUFF sb.2; the form may be imitated from handiwork.]
1. In pl. Blows or fighting with the fists.
1605. Armin, Foole upon F. (1880), 23. The foole … in an enuious spleene smarting ripe, runnes after him, fals at fisty cuffes with him.
1613. T. Godwin, Rom. Antiq. (1658), 92. This kinde of fight succeeded fisticuffes, and because in fisticuffes the party striking, did by the blow as well hurt his own fist, as he did him that was strucken, hereupon they invented this other kind of fight with lethern switches.
a. 1625. Beaum. & Fl., Little French Lawyer, IV. iv. To revenge my wrongs at fisty-cuffs.
1732. Swift, Let, 28 Aug. My invention and judgment are perpetually at fisty-cuffs, till they have quite disabled each other; and the merest trifles I ever wrote are serious philosophical lucubrations in comparison to what I now busy myself about.
1811. Sporting Mag., XXXIX. Oct., 34/2. The company, though consisting chiefly of fighting men and lovers of fisty-cuffs, never had recourse to them, but met and parted with the utmost harmony.
1858. R. A. Vaughan, Ess. & Rem., I. 23. The blows which … [religious controversialists] give and take are not mere fisticuffs.
1877. Symonds, Renaiss. Italy, v. 243. It now and then happened that the literary gladiators came to actual fisticuffs.
2. attrib. (quasi-adj.)
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, IV. viii. It is lucky for the women, that the seat of fistycuff war is not the same with them as among men.
1810. Naval Chron., XXIV. 369. This Moor was seldom out of a quarrel on board ship, and having some knowlege of the fistycuffs art, he reigned pretty much as cock of the walk on the lower gun-deck.
1848. J. Grant, Adv. Aide-de-C., II. xii. 169. Appalled by his words, I endeavoured to trace in his features the fair-haired and light-hearted boy who used to carry me on his back to school, and was my champion and protector in many a fisticuff battle and bicker.
