fighter
Americannoun
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fighters
plural
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a boxer; pugilist.
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Military. an aircraft designed to seek out and destroy enemy aircraft in the air and to protect bomber aircraft.
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a person who fights, struggles, resists, etc.
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a person with the will, courage, determination, ability, or disposition to fight, struggle, resist, etc.
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an animal, as a dog, trained to fight or having the disposition to fight.
noun
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a person who fights, esp a professional boxer
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a person who has determination
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military an armed aircraft designed for destroying other aircraft
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of fighter
before 1000; Middle English; Old English fēohtere. See fight, -er 1
Explanation
Someone who battles or brawls with other people is a fighter. Some fighters, like boxers, do it professionally, while others just have a tendency to fight. If you have a habit of getting into scuffles or fistfights, you're a fighter, and when you watch a boxing match, you might pick one of the two fighters to root for. An animal might also be described as a fighter: lions are natural fighters, and a fish struggling hard on the end of a hook is a fighter. Other fighters work heroically for a belief or ideal: "She was a fighter in the struggle for civil rights."
Vocabulary lists containing fighter
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Thailand's Queen Suthida made her first solo flight in a fighter jet, according to the Thai Royal Household.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
Musk could buy about 11,000 F-35 fighter jets.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
The turning point came in 1983 when a Soviet fighter shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after the passenger jet mistakenly flew into Soviet airspace.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
While the quartet — the first metal band to perform at Sphere — tore through the instrumental deep cut “The Call of Ktulu,” that drippy leviathan swatted at life-sized fighter jets on the screen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026
In the distance, I could hear the occasional hum of fighter planes overhead.
From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler
That kind of pricing power worries inflation fighters like Hammack.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2026
After declaring a counter-offensive against the Houthis, Yemen's government claimed to have pushed the fighters out of strategic areas on the Red Sea and the port city of Mocha.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
Writer and producer Cathal J Ferris said the idea grew from his own experience of boxing and conversations with fighters.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
“Generational change” is people looking for real fighters.
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2026
Soviet fighter pilots cleared the sky of German night fighters around them for several nights.
From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein
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.
