pugilist

noun

Etymology: From Latin pugil (“boxer”) + -ist, related to pugnus (“fist”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- (“prick, punch”). Compare contemporary pugilism (“boxing”) (1791).

1. One who fights with their fists, especially a professional prize fighter; a boxer.

   “I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blind Bendigoes!”

   “In 1925, boxer shorts were unleashed on the world: loose-fitting underwear for men, featuring an elastic waistband inspired by the shorts worn by boxers. It was underwear for the inner pugilist.”

2. One who engages in rhetorical attacks, for himself or on behalf of another.

   “President Obama's style leaves liberal activists in the Democratic Party cold. They prefer a pugilist fighting for principle over a pragmatist agreeing to compromises. Can the president reignite the enthusiasm of his party's core supporters by November?”

   “A pugilist for the modern movement in the arts, [Edith] Sitwell was often in demand as a speaker, and she could fill a room. On 8 May 1923, she debated with the poet Alfred Noyes at the London School of Economics to raise money for the Hospitals of London Appeal. Sitwell associated Noyes with J. C. Squire and once remarked that his work was like cheap linoleum: 'they have the same kind of smoothness!' Edmund Gosse, the chairman, asked Noyes beforehand to take it easy: '"'Do not, I beg of you, use a weaver's beam on the head of poor Edith."" Noyes did win the opening round. Sitwell, wearing gold laurels, asked if she could bring her supporters to the platform; Noyes agreed on the condition that he could bring his. When asked who they were, he answered blandly, '"Oh, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and a few others." Sitwell opened her lecture, 'In their day, Keats and Shelley were the most persecuted of poets, and Tom Moore was the most popular. In our days, my brothers and I are the most persecuted of poets, and,' pointing an accusing finger at her opponent, 'Mr Noyes..." At that point laughter drowned out her words. She went on to deliver a scripted talk on how all great poets are innovators in their time and that she was glad to join them in the asylum to which their contemporaries assigned them.”