word-fence

But it was at any rate an obvious and excellent school of word-fence, a gymnasium and exercising-ground for style.

The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) George Saintsbury 1889

Thus trained to subtle eloquence, Cyprian had been recently sent on an embassy to Constantinople, and had there shown himself in the word-fence a match for the keenest of the Greeks.

Theodoric the Goth Barbarian Champion of Civilisation Thomas Hodgkin 1872

Motion must be motion in space, of course; from point to point in it, -- and again, more closely, from point to point within such interval; and so on, infinitely; 'tis rest there: perpetual motion is perpetual rest: -- the hurricane, the falling tower, the deadly arrow from the bow at whose coming you shake there so wretchedly, Zeno's own rapid word-fence -- all alike at rest, to the restful eye of the pure reason!

Plato and Platonism Walter Pater 1866