Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rough-and-tumble   /rəf-ənd-tˈəmbəl/   Listen
Rough-and-tumble

adjective
1.
Characterized by disorderly action and disregard for rules.  Synonyms: bare-knuckle, bare-knuckled.  "Rough-and-tumble politics" , "Undisguised bare-knuckle capitalism"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Rough-and-tumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... formed my platoon in line in the woods behind the line. They didn't know why. They were just a bunch of tired, hard-bitten, mud-spattered, rough-and-tumble soldiers standing stoically at attention, equally ready to go over the top, rebuild a shell-torn road, or march to a rest billet. At 10:45 I gave the command: "Unload rifles!" They didn't know why and didn't particularly care. Then—"Unload pistols." And while they still stood rigid and motionless ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... Hyde with a roar. Him, too, Bill eliminated from consideration with the loaded whip handle. But, this done, Bill found himself hugged in the arms of the other man, as in the embrace of a bereaved she-grizzly. Now even at his best the laughing Mr. Hyde was no hand at rough-and-tumble, it being his opinion that fisticuffs was a peculiarly indecisive and exhausting way of settling a dispute. He possessed a vile temper, moreover, and once aroused half measures failed to ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... went the guns; whack! went the broadswords; thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick, thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, heads-over-heels, rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the mine! roared stout Rising—Tantarar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet of Antony Van Corlear;—until ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... windows of the newspaper office the American desert was visible; that within a radius of ten miles Indians were encamping amongst the sage—brush; that the whole city was populated with miners, adventurers, Jew traders, gamblers, and all the rough-and-tumble class which a mining town in a new territory collects together, and it will be readily understood that a reporter for a daily paper in such a place must neither go about his duties wearing light kid gloves, nor be fastidious about having gilt edges to his note-books. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... But, why take accidents So bitterly? It's all a rough-and-tumble Of accidents, from the accident of birth To the last accident that lays us out— A go-as-you-please, and the devil take the hindmost. It's pluck that counts, and an easy seat in the saddle: Better to break your neck at the first ditch, Than waste ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... I shall be told that all this is quite out of date; that modern girls are so independent that they stand in no need of brothers, but like to place themselves on a level with them and share as good comrades in all their rough-and-tumble games. Let us be of good cheer. Sex is a very ancient institution, the slow evolution of hundreds of centuries, and is in no danger of being obliterated by the fashion of a day. Take the most advanced "new woman"; yes, concealed ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... did Dilsey apologize, and say she thought it was a 'possum; Riar would listen to no excuse; and as soon as Dilsey reached the ground they had a rough-and-tumble fight, in which both parties got considerably worsted in the way of losing valuable hair, and of having their eyes filled with dirt and their clean dresses all muddied; but Tot was so much afraid Riar, her little nurse and maid, would ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... works. They were carried by assault, many of the enemy being bayoneted beneath ingenious barricades that they deemed impregnable. The enemy were killed or driven out, and their cannon captured. For ten minutes it was a desperate, give-and-take, rough-and-tumble fight. The artillerymen attempted to reload when the assaulting party was not ten paces distant. The enemy retreated to a second ridge of the mountain, and made a determined effort to form a line, but the pursuit was too hot for the effort ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... celebrated night of the laying of the foundation stone I had the pleasure of witnessing a rough-and-tumble fight between two of the most powerful men in Coolgardie. The excitement was intense as one seized his antagonist, and, using him as a flail, proceeded to clear the room with him; he retaliated by overpowering the other man, and finally ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... Costigan, once more encased in his own armor, heaved a great sigh of relief. "Rough-and-tumble's all right with one or two, but that generator room is full of grief, and we won't have any too much stuff as it is. We've got to take Clio's suit along—we'll carry it down to the door of the power room, drop it there, and pick it up after ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... were astounded. They had always thought of Mexico as a land of rough-and-tumble, comic-opera revolutions; a place where one must forever be on the lookout for trouble; where robbers were rife and the days were nothing but a chain of abominations. A sunny, beautiful country, maybe; but no place for a God-fearing American citizen to settle. Why, they would as soon commit ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... length seal coat, bunch of paradise, five-drop diamond La Valliere set in platinum, electric brougham. Abe has got a business head, take it from me. But he's wise enough to know that business isn't the rough-and-tumble game it used to be. He realizes that he'll do for the workrooms, but not for the front shop. He knows that if he wants to keep on growing he's got to have what they call a steerer. Somebody smooth, and polished, and politic, and what the highbrows call suave. Do you ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... District, as they were usually hurried and undertaken with scant preparation. Very little of the flesh-pots of Bengal sufficed to satisfy Muktiarbad's Chief of Police, who had been thoroughly broken in to the rough-and-tumble of official life in the mafasil. The presence of his family in camp was a hindrance to Mr. Bright, and he was better pleased to return, after his strenuous duties, to the peace of domesticity at his bungalow in the Station. Moreover, there ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... my pocket," said Seabrooke; "how can you carry such a sum of money in such an insecure place, Neville? Playing rough-and-tumble games, too, when any minute it is likely to fall out of your pocket. I shall lock it up, I can tell you; and what if you tell me not to return it to you till ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... he was sixteen he had fallen in love, at his home in Virginia, and had fought a rough-and-tumble with his man rival, by name William Veach or else Leitchman. He seemed to be holding Leitchman pretty even, too—until his rival's friends jumped ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... game for a rough-and-tumble. It's sure to come sooner or later, and we may as well get it ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... board a Glasgow steamer, and landed safe at 2 A.M. on the morning of the 7th. The notes of the tour, set down on his return to Chelsea and republished in 1882, have only the literary merit of the vigorous descriptive touches inseparable from the author's lightest writing; otherwise they are mere rough-and-tumble jottings, with no consecutive meaning, of a rapid hawk's-eye view ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... Happiness" was rich in stunts that would have made even Battling Nelson turn to tatting with a sigh of relief. Five gangsters, sicked on to their work by the villain, waylaid our hero on the stairs, and in the rough-and-tumble that followed, it was his duty to beat each and every one of them into a state of coma. He performed his task so conscientiously that his hands were swollen for a week, not to mention his eyes and nose. As for the five extra men who posed ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... steamship companies with stokers, firemen and engine-room assistants, and the dockyards and workshops with fitters and mechanics. A hardy race they are, with their muscular frames, thick lips and crisp black hair—the very last men you would wish to meet in a rough-and-tumble, and yet withal a jovial people, well-disposed and hospitable to anyone whom they regard as a friend. If they trust you fully they will give you carte blanche to witness one of their periodical dances, in which both sexes participate and, which commencing ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... eyes of yours, what I'm driving at.—This, beloved one—you see the waiting carriage over there. Hadn't we best get into it, turn the horses' heads citywards again, and drink our tea, you and I, on the way up to the station somewhere very much else than on board this rough-and-tumble rather foul-breathed cargo boat?—I'm so beastly afraid you may be disgusted and shocked by the interval between what you're accustomed to and what I am. To let ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... laughableness of hypocrisy, first of all. He takes some popular convention, that of medicine or marriage or what you will, and shows you not merely how false it is but how ludicrously false. He purges the soul, not with the terror and pity of tragedy, but with the irresistible laughter of rough-and-tumble farce. To think wrongly is, first of all, so absurd. He proves it by putting wrong thinking on the stage, where you see it for yourself in action, and laugh immoderately. Perhaps you had never thought ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... turn to be grateful now!' said Longworth. 'In a rough-and-tumble fight I am afraid you would master me easier than you would do in a ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... could make you thick-skinned for your own. It's the only way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble world as ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... generally. Gravity, solemnity, seriousness, are conspicuous by their absence; even that 'restraint' which is the salient characteristic of Greek expression in literature no less than in Art, is largely relaxed in the rough-and-tumble, informal, miscellaneous modern ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... at his feet Hugh Roush could not have been more surprised. He was a big, rough man, muscular and sinewy, and he had been the victor of many a rough-and-tumble fight. On account of his reputation for quarrelsomeness men chose their words carefully when they spoke to him. That this little fellow with the smooth, girlish face and the small, almost womanish hands and feet should defy him ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... inspired by politeness. He was putting himself in an attitude of defense and was depending on the brawn of a man who had been a tough proposition when he swung his police club on a New York beat. He even moved a chair which might get underfoot in a rough-and-tumble. But his muscles relaxed when he looked at ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... answer. We, for instance, have (or had, for perhaps it has been stolen) a biography of that same Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, with whom Andrew Marvell 'and others who called Milton friend' had such rough-and-tumble feuds about 1666, and at whose expense it was that Marvell made the whole nation merry in his 'Rehearsal Transprosed.' This Parker had a 'knack' at making himself odious; he had a curiosa felicitas in attracting hatreds, and wherever he lodged for a fortnight he trailed after ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... time things in that pit were very confused and very noisy. Both students were big and both were furiously angry. By rule they would have been very evenly matched, but in a rough-and-tumble scrimmage there was no comparison. The classes made silent and neutral spectators, as Landers swung the man around in the narrow pit like a whirlwind, and finally pushed him back ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... for Udo. He forgot his manners and made a jump towards her. She glided gracefully behind the sundial in a pretty affectation of alarm . . . and the next moment Udo decided that the contest between them was not to be settled by such rough-and-tumble methods as these. The fact that his tail had caught in ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... went the guns; whack! went the broad-swords; thump went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows, kicks, cuffs; scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, head-over-heels, rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the mine roared stout Risingh. Tanta-rar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet of Antony Van Corlear;—until all voice and sound became unintelligible,—grunts ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... days had not attained its later refinements. The combatants were placed opposite to each other, each flinging a cloak about his left arm, to serve as a shield, and they prepared to encounter in what would seem a fashion of "rough-and-tumble" to ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... prevented this movement; and the next moment, falling back, when I jumped on top of him, he and I were rolling over and over, locked together, the baboon and I, in each other's arms, and engaged in one of the biggest rough-and-tumble fights I ever had the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... the head of the brook, and lying there side by side they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down gravely from her gray rock watching her ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... have a great interest in questions of justice, and I confess that I find a certain wild equity in this principle, which I see nobody could do business on. It strikes me as idyllic—it's a touch of real poetry in the rough-and-tumble prose of our ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... fate of these infantile members of the boat population is sad. They are exposed to a "rough-and-tumble" existence as soon as they are ushered into the world, especially should the poor innocent have the misfortune to be born a girl baby, for in that case she has simply to shift for herself, the inhuman parents ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... play was better than that of most men; but this was, in fact, his first real duel. In the troubled state of Ireland, with internal discord, challenge, and attack, he had more than once fought, and with success; but that was in the rough-and-tumble of life's chances, as it were, with no deliberate plan to fight according to the rules. Many times, of course, in the process of his training, he had fought as men fight in duels, but with this difference—that now he was permitted to disable ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... slammed down his desk-top and reached for his hat with one hand and a half-smoked cigar with the other. When the front door closed behind him Watson and Perry engaged in a rough-and-tumble. A heavy ruler rolled to the floor with a bang, Porter's big boot struck a fixture, and various other accidents contributed to ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... it. He could have whipped with ease, and he did whip, but the spirit of the thoroughbred was not in Captain Mayhall Wells. He had Sturgill down, but Hence sank his teeth into Mayhall's thigh while Mayhall's hands grasped his opponent's throat. The captain had only to squeeze, as every rough-and-tumble fighter knew, and endure his pain until Hence would have to give in. But Mayhall was not built to endure. He roared like a bull as soon as the teeth met in his flesh, his fingers relaxed, and to the disgusted surprise of everybody he began to roar ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... one factor of the stock in trade that had made him a dominant figure in the underworld of New York. He was vain enough to think that if it came to the worst there were few men living who could best him in a rough-and-tumble fight. Certainly no hill-billy from ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... ungrammatical speech, which seemed "shackled by a preternatural secretion of saliva." Here, indeed, for ugliness and caustic tongue was "the Thersites of the law." Yet once he was roused to action, his great resources made themselves apparent: a memory amounting to genius, a boyish delight in the rough-and-tumble of combat, a wealth of passion, kept in perfect curb till the enemy was already in rout before solid argument and then let loose with destroying effect. This child of nature was governed in his practice of the law less by retainers than by his personal loves and hatreds. Samuel Chase he loved ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... supplies to be forwarded to a given point, and outlined plans of action. In the late afternoon the boy in the loft saw them ride away, a dozen lean, long-bodied men armed to the limit. With all his heart the watcher wished he could be like one of them, ready for any emergency that the rough-and-tumble life of the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... Grandma promptly, "they are the most rough-and-tumble, catch-as-catch-can batch of young coyotes that ever lived. They don't respect God, man, nor the devil. And why should they? That's educated into ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... compose anything in the operatic style: he was for ever done with opera; henceforth music-drama alone would occupy him. And lo! here, at the very first opportunity, we find him not merely writing a grand opera finale to his first act—which he could justify; a rough-and-tumble finale to his second act—which he could justify; but a set concerto piece in the middle of his third act—which according to his own theories at any rate, he could not justify! He might well avow that when he came to compose ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... prefer making an angry man laugh to fighting with him; but one day there called at the office a very furious photographer. What the paper may have said about him or his photographs has been forgotten, but never will those who witnessed it forget the rough-and-tumble all over the floor in which he and Kipling indulged. The libel, or whatever it was, which had infuriated the photographer was not Kipling's work, but the quarrel was forced upon him, and although he was handicapped by his spectacles and ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... and hear a whirling, howling, clawing, spitting, rough-and-tumble conflict going on in the midst of ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... pair as they glared at each other. If they had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other and had a rough-and-tumble fight. As it was, they did the next thing ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a noble-looking, black animal, whose strength and capacity for endurance had been well tested. This morning he was in high spirits and looked good for months of rough-and-tumble service. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... Barber by the front of his coat and by an elbow. For a moment they hung upon the sill. Then, pivoting, they swung beyond it. As Father Pat closed the door upon them, at once there came to the ears of the trio in the kitchen, the sounds of a rough-and-tumble battle. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... we was going to be drownded, and if I'm to be drownded, I don't want it to be like that. It was such a rough-and-tumble way." ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... sturdy, and the months spent in the lumber camps had given hardness to their muscles. Their ever-readiness for a rough-and-tumble, the fact that neither had ever been known to dodge trouble—although neither had ever sought it, and that where one was involved in danger there was sure to be found the other also—had gained for them among the rough ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes

... dancing has commenced; the players of violins, concertinas, and penny whistles do a brisk trade among the groups eager for a rough-and-tumble valse; so do the pickpockets. Vigorous and varied is the jollity that occupies the external galleries, filling now in expectation of the fireworks; indescribable the mingled tumult that roars heavenwards. Girls linked by the half-dozen arm-in-arm ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... field with a Wuerttemberg regiment to fight the King of Prussia. He soon reached the grade of lieutenant, in time that of captain; fought and ran with his countrymen, at Leuthen, floundered at peril of life in the swamps of Breslau and otherwise got his full share of the war's rough-and-tumble. From time to time, as the chance came to him, he visited his ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... carved out of granite, and the eye which collided with Archie's as the latter, with an attempt at an ingratiating smile, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table was hard and frosty. Mr. Connolly gave the impression that he would be a good man to have on your side during a rough-and-tumble fight down on the water-front or in some lumber-camp, but he did ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... labor;—and the further the parallel is pursued through the many ramifications of the subject, the closer will it be discovered to hold. For one, I hold that the monogamous family—bruised and wounded in the cruel rough-and-tumble of modern society, where, with few favored exceptions of highest type, male creation is held down, physically, mentally and morally, to the brutalizing level of the brute, forced to grub and grub ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... bore very hardly on those who were not strong. They used to ride races on our backs and have desperate mounted battles and tournaments. In many a playground and home since then I have seen boys tilt and race, and steeplechase, with smaller boys upon their backs, and plenty of wholesome rough-and-tumble in the game; and it has given me a twinge of heartache to think how, even when we were at play, Crayshaw's baneful spirit cursed us with its example, so that the big and strong could not be happy except at the expense of the little ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... represented, and could say or do what he pleased; and for any offence he might give, was ready to settle with words, or a fist-fight. Physically powerful, he knew there were but few who, in a rough-and-tumble, could compete with him; and when his adversary yielded, he would give him his hand to aid him from the ground, or to settle it amicably in words. "Any way to have ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... the Pennington home warned him to proceed cautiously; for while harbouring no apprehensions as to the outcome of a possible clash with Rondeau, Bryce was not so optimistic as to believe he would escape unscathed from an encounter. Experience had impressed upon him the fact that in a rough-and-tumble battle nobody is quite so thoroughly at home as a lumberjack; once in a clinch with such a man, even a champion gladiator of the prize ring may well feel apprehensive of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... get broad-leaved and succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing pitch- and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... had stepped close to Lewis—so close that the latter did not need to advance a foot. Instead, he held his ground, and the challenger, accepting this as a sign of willingness for battle, rushed at him, with the evident intent of a rough-and-tumble grapple after the fashion of his kind. To his surprise, he was held off by the leveled forearm of his opponent, rigid as ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... departure. Two hours afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows, and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognisably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... combination and transition obtains within its bounds, what a brutal caricature and reduction of highest things to the lowest possible expression is it to represent its field of conflict as a sort of rough-and-tumble fight between two hostile temperaments! What a childishly external view! And again, how stupid it is to treat the abstractness of rationalist systems as a crime, and to damn them because they offer themselves as sanctuaries ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... practice, he knew that he had the advantage, and, now that it was man to man, he realized that there was no danger of interference from Horton. But Samson knew nothing of boxing. He had learned his fighting tactics in the rough-and-tumble school of the mountains; the school of "fist and skull," of fighting with hands and head and teeth, and as the Easterner squared off he found himself caught in a flying tackle and went to the floor locked in an embrace that carried down with it chairs and furniture. As he struggled and rolled, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... man-handling schools, veterans of multitudes of rough-and-tumble battles, men of blood and sweat and endurance, they nevertheless lacked one thing that Daylight possessed in high degree—namely, an almost perfect brain and muscular coordination. It was simple, in its way, and no virtue of his. He had been born with this endowment. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... extremities of the valves were visible as narrow slits, were the long-sought-for molluscs. Judging by the extreme care of the species for its own protection—for it is ill-fitted in model and texture for a rough-and-tumble struggle for existence—one is inclined to the opinion that it must have many enemies. The valves are frail and brittle, and only when they gape are they revealed, and the gape is self consciously polite. The sponge embraces the slender mollusc ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... his gun. He was, too, a rough-and-tumble fighter with his hands. But Hal Rutherford was one man he knew better than to tackle. He fell back, growling threats in ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... the man's flunkey, the butt of his ill-natured jokes, the helpless victim of his bad temper. Inside, he writhed. Another failure was being scored against him. But what could he do? This Bandy Walker was a gunman and a rough-and-tumble fighter. He boasted of it. Bob would be ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... group which hunts in packs. For ages they have been used to a communal life. Their minds have thus become accustomed to social intercourse; they are used to having their excitements of the chase in comradeship, and generally they are accustomed to the rough-and-tumble fraternity which we behold in a pack of wolves. It was long ago remarked that the really social animals are those which afford the only good material for subjugation. The difference between the cat and dog seems, in a way, to ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... moment, the two men were disposed to make a livelier fight of it than ever. It was a brisk, picturesque, rough-and-tumble fight that followed, in which the young boys got a deal ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... and blithely paired, Their rough-and-tumble play they shared; They kissed and quarrelled, laughed and cried, A year ago ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... upon this theme, which apparently fascinated him, with tales of Perkins' prowess in rough-and-tumble fighting. But Cameron had lost interest and was lying down again with ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... master marked up before, but on such occasions the other man was a sight for the gods to wonder at. Now Weaver was the spectacle, and the other was untouched. In view of Buck's reputation as a rough-and-tumble fighter, this seemed no less than a miracle. Curly departed with the wonder unexplained, for Weaver dismissed him with ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... from the joyous revel, her little form swaying lightly to and fro, with the undulations of the lily-stem against which she more perceptibly rested. It is well for Root and Collins and Plumbe that the royal daguerreotyper was laid up in a cowslip, with a broken skylight which he had received in a rough-and-tumble with a gnat, about the ownership of a particular ray of light, at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... came to the farmhouse to romp and wrestle with the bear-cub. Nothing pleased him more than a rough-and-tumble, and he was quite an expert wrestler, once he learned how to floor ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... the best chapters in it are those which bring us into contact with Cartwright and other Methodist ministers, the frontiersmen and bushfighters of the Church, who do not bandy subtilties with Mephistopheles, nor consider that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman, but go in for a rough-and-tumble fight with Satan and his imps, as with so many red Injuns undeserving of the rights and incapable of the amenities of civilized warfare. We confess a thorough liking for these Leatherstockings of the clergy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... much? Do you mean that you and I must fall upon him? You forget that he will have men about him. A duel is one thing, a rough-and-tumble another, and we shall fare none so ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... themselves vigorously to a spirited rough-and-tumble fight. Talbot, who was the more easily observed by reason of his shining pate and the pink stripes of his pajamas, appeared to be revolving about the person of his neighbor. Wilton, though taller, lacked the rotund Talbot's ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson

... hard fact, but the kiss put a rainbow in the sky. It roused a great hope, a joy, an ecstasy, a sense of well-wishing for mankind; and yet it was only he who had changed. The world was the same; Samuel Blount was the same; and the miners, and Stiff Neck George. They were all there together in a rough-and-tumble fight to see who would get the Paymaster Mine and, even with the madness of her kiss in his soul, he pressed on ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... learn the advantages of Self-restraint and the vanity of a mere gratification of the Senses. Early and frequent morning ablutions, brisk morning toweling, half of a Graham biscuit in a teacup of milk, exercise with the dumb-bells, and a little rough-and-tumble play in a straw hat, check apron, and overalls would eventually improve that stamina necessary for his future Position, and repress a dangerous cerebral activity and tendency to give way to—He suddenly stopped, coughed, and absolutely looked embarrassed. Johnnyboy, a moving cloud of white pique, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... develop, eventually, a fine sense of humor in a child. I purposely use the word, "eventually," because I realize, first, that humor has various stages, and that seldom, if ever, can one expect an appreciation of fine humor from a normal child, that is, from an elemental mind. It seems as if the rough-and-tumble element were almost a necessary stage through which children must pass, and which is a normal and healthy stage; but up to now we have quite unnecessarily extended the period of elephantine fun, and, though we cannot ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... of blows and feints they came together. It was the old story of science against brute strength. Jasper Swope was a rough-and-tumble fighter of note; he was quick, too, in spite of his weight, and his blows were like the strokes of a sledge; but Hardy did not attempt to stand up against him. For the first few minutes it was more of a chase ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... a great amount of skill and a greater amount of womanly courage, neither of which qualities Miss Greeby possessed. She had no skill in managing a man, as her instincts were insufficiently feminine, and her courage was of a purely rough-and-tumble kind. She could have endured hunger and thirst and cold: she could have headed a forlorn hope: she could have held to a sinking ship: but she had no store of that peculiar feminine courage which men don't understand and which women can't explain, however much they may exhibit ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... establishment of the House of Commons, and cut off the power of the king to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament. It also exchanged the judicial rough-and-tumble on horseback for the trial by jury. Serfdom continued, and a good horse would bring more in ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... "that you call yourself a good rough-and-tumble fighter; that you've never met your match. I want to get ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony



Words linked to "Rough-and-tumble" :   scrap, disorderly, combat, bare-knuckled, fight, fighting



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com