[ad. Gr. ταυρομαχία, f. ταῦρος bull + μάχη fighting (see -MACHY): so F. tauromachie.] The practice or custom of bull-fighting; also (with a and pl.) a bull-fight.
1831. W. R. Wilson, Trav. (ed. 3), II. xxii. 353. There is a school of tauromachy established here [Seville], with two professors.
1846. Thackeray, Cornhill to Cairo, ii. It was not a real Spanish tauromachy—only a theatrical combat.
1846. Times, 17 June, 5/6. The art of tauromachy has just sustained an irreparable loss by the death of Montes, the Spanish matador.
1892. Cornh. Mag., Sept., 292. In the interests of civilisation and progress, it declares against the tauromachies.
1902. Muncey’s Mag., XXVI. 524/2. Under the Bourbons, it [bull-fighting] went out of royal fashion, though it was still practised, and it was restored by Ferdinand VII, who established a college of tauromachy.
So Tauromachian, Tauromachic [F. tauromachique] adjs., of or pertaining to tauromachy.
1834. trans. Merimée’s Lett. fr. Spain, in Dublin Univ. Mag., III. June, 666/2. Often, also, the pain of the wounds he [the bull] receives from the lance disheartens him, and then he becomes afraid again to attack the horses, or, to use the tauromachic phrase, he refuses to enter.
1845. Ford, Handbk. Spain, I. 146. A tendency to gitanesque and tauro-machian slang. Ibid. (1846), Gatherings fr. Spain (1906), 233. The beloved monarch shut up the lecture rooms forthwith, opening … by way of compensation, a tauromachian university.
1887. Daily Tel., 17 June (Cassell). The matador is forbidden by the laws of tauromachic etiquette to attack the bull.
1894. Westm. Gaz., 13 June, 2/1. There are about fifteen special tauromachic newspapers … in France.
