fist
see also: FIST
Pronunciation Etymology 1

From Middle English fist, from Old English fȳst, from Proto-West Germanic *fūsti, of uncertain origin.

Noun

fist (plural fists)

  1. A hand with the fingers clenched or curled inward.
    The boxer's fists rained down on his opponent in the last round.
  2. (printing) The pointing hand symbol ☞.
  3. (ham radio) The characteristic signaling rhythm of an individual telegraph or CW operator when sending Morse code.
  4. (slang) A person's characteristic handwriting.
  5. A group of men.
  6. The talons of a bird of prey.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗, stanza 34:
      More light then Culver in the Faulcons fist.
  7. (informal) An attempt at something.
    • 2005, Darryl N. Davis, Visions of Mind: Architectures for Cognition and Affect, page 144:
      With the rise of cognitive neuroscience, the time may be coming when we can make a reasonable fist of mapping down from an understanding of the functional architecture of the mind to the structural architecture of the brain.
Synonyms Translations Translations Translations Verb

fist (fists, present participle fisting; simple past and past participle fisted)

  1. To strike with the fist.
    • 18 Aug 2003, Damian Cullen. "Running the rule" The Irish Times page 52
      ...may not score a point with his open hand(s), but may score a point by fisting the ball.
  2. To close (the hand) into a fist.
    • 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin, published 2011, page 29:
      He noticed Ada's trick of hiding her fingernails by fisting her hand or stretching it with the palm turned upward when helping herself to a biscuit.
  3. To grip with a fist.
    • 1851 November 13, Herman Melville, “chapter 34”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC ↗:
      I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when I was before the mast.
  4. (slang) To fist-fuck.
Translations Etymology 2

From Middle English fisten, fiesten, from Old English *fistan "to break wind gently"; supported by Old English fisting, from Proto-Germanic *fistaz, from Proto-Germanic *fīsaną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peys-.

Verb

fist (fists, present participle fisting; simple past and past participle fisted)

  1. (intransitive) To break wind.
Noun

fist (plural fists)

  1. The act of breaking wind; fise.
  2. A puffball.

FIST
Proper noun
  1. Acronym of Future Infantry Soldier Technology



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