FENCING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Fencing

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/fˈɛnsɪŋ/ Listen

noun

Fencing n.

1.

The art or practice of attack and defense with the sword, esp. with the smallsword. See Fence, v. i., 2.

2.

Disputing or debating in a manner resembling the art of fencers.

3.

The materials used for building fences. (U.S.)

4.

The act of building a fence.

5.

The aggregate of the fences put up for inclosure or protection; as, the fencing of a farm.

verb

Fence v. t. (past & past part. fenced; pres. part. fencing)

1.

To fend off danger from; to give security to; to protect; to guard. "To fence my ear against thy sorceries."

2.

To inclose with a fence or other protection; to secure by an inclosure. "O thou wall!... dive in the earth, And fence not Athens." "A sheepcote fenced about with olive trees."

To fence the tables (Scot. Church), to make a solemn address to those who present themselves to commune at the Lord's supper, on the feelings appropriate to the service, in order to hinder, so far as possible, those who are unworthy from approaching the table.

Fence v. i.

1.

To make a defense; to guard one's self of anything, as against an attack; to give protection or security, as by a fence. "Vice is the more stubborn as well as the more dangerous evil, and therefore, in the first place, to be fenced against."

2.

To practice the art of attack and defense with the sword or with the foil, esp. with the smallsword, using the point only. "He will fence with his own shadow."

3.

Hence, to fight or dispute in the manner of fencers, that is, by thrusting, guarding, parrying, etc. "As when a billow, blown against, Falls back, the voice with which I fenced A little ceased, but recommenced."

See images of 'Fencing'

Etymology of 'Fencing'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Fencing" Quotes from Famous Books

... melancholy observation which many other young men have made under similar circumstances. Sent to Leipzig in his seventeenth year, he finds himself an awkward, ungainly lad, and sets diligently to perfecting himself in the somewhat unscholastic accomplishments of riding, dancing, and fencing. He also sedulously frequents the theatre, and wrote a play, "The Young Scholar," which attained the honor of representation. Meanwhile his most intimate companion was a younger brother of his old tutor Mylius, a young man of more than questionable morals, and who had even written a satire on ...

— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... don't mean going and blunder-headed chopping at a man like one goes at a tree, but fencing a bit till you get your chance. We're fencing, lad. What we've got to do is to take or sink all the enemy we can, not ...

— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... great thoroughfare. From hence I came through some villages to a small town of the name of Bakewell. The whole country in this part is hilly and romantic. Often my way led me, by small passes, over astonishing eminences, where, in the deep below me, I saw a few huts or cottages lying. The fencing of the fields with grey stone gave the whole a wild and not very promising appearance. The hills were in general not wooded, but naked and barren; and you saw the flocks at a distance grazing on ...

— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... man that was none, an Angler by a book: he that undertakes it, shall undertake a harder task then Hales that in his printed Book* [*Called the private School of defence] undertook by it to teach the Art of Fencing, and was laught at for his labour. Not but that something usefull might be observed out of that Book; but that Art was not to be taught by words; nor is the Art of Angling. And yet, I think, that most that love ...

— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... god an engine on his foe"—much as a modern prince might a gatling-gun; but it seems to have slowly dawned upon the royal ignorami that the Lord is usually on the side of the heaviest battalions—a fact which Napoleon emphasized. The practice of fencing in a nation with a few wild-eyed prophets, or sending a single soldier forth with a hair-trigger hoodoo and the jawbone of a defunct jackass to drive great armies into the earth, gradually fell into disuse—curses and blessings became ...

— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

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