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fighting words
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Idioms and Phrases
A statement bound to start a quarrel or fight. It is often expressed as them's fighting words , as in You say your father's smarter than mine? Them's fighting words . The ungrammatical use of them's for “those are” emphasizes the folksy tone of this colloquialism, first recorded in Ring Lardner's Gullible's Travels (1917).Discover More
Example Sentences
Among these are obscenity, defamation, fighting words, express incitement to unlawful conduct, and threats.
Fighting words like those that propelled his team to the top of the industry, but it looks like that drive might have been sapped.
Cruz, who certainly considers himself Hispanic, had fighting words in response.
Those are fighting words in a nearly half-Latino city where Tex-Mex restaurants outnumber all others.
Obviously, a federal judge so inclined could very easily find that the offensive name constitutes fighting words or slander.
He knew that even knuckling down, and changing from man to worm to take back his fighting words, couldn't do any good.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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