Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A game-cock (which see).
- noun A pugnacious fellow.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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After a number of short, glittering feints, Purfle dodges in, quick as a fighting-cock.
Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978
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In spite of his fighting-cock airs, he hasn't two farthings 'worth of spunk -- it would be easy enough to lead him by the nose.
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And so she stayed on; and as Nancy was living, as she expressed it, like a fighting-cock, she resigned herself very contentedly to her lot, as she resigned herself to Horatia's wearing Sarah's clothes.
Sarah's School Friend May Baldwin
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It is certain that he will ascertain the laws of heredity, and create human qualities as he has created the spurs of the fighting-cock and the legs of the greyhound.
The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition Upton Sinclair 1923
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Then with a dim suggestion of dawn every living dog and fighting-cock, of which each inhabitant appears to possess at least a score, joins the forty thousand vendors of forty thousand different species of uselessness howling in at least as many different voices and tones, each a bit louder than all the others, until even an unoccupied wanderer concludes that sleep is an idle waste of an all too short existence.
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras — Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond Harry Alverson Franck 1921
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It is certain that he will ascertain the laws of heredity, and create human qualities as he has created the spurs of the fighting-cock and the legs of the greyhound.
The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation 1918
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Bathe your feet in the creek, and then you'll feel as fit as a fighting-cock.
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With the exception of the fighting-cock, chickens, dogs, pigs, and carabaos are left to forage for themselves.
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"I want to know where Binhart is!" he cried, leaning forward so that his head projected pugnaciously from his shoulders like the head of a fighting-cock.
Never-Fail Blake Arthur Stringer 1912
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This prescription required the blood of a still-born male child; one old black-letter book recommended the heart of a yellow hen; another ordered the life-warm entrails of a black fighting-cock; a fourth prescription commanded the admixture of hairs from a dead man's beard!
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