FREE-FOR-ALL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Free-for-all

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/fri-fɔr-ɔl/ Listen

noun

free-for-all n.

A noisy and disordered fight conducted without rules.

Synonyms: brawl.

Hence: Any vigorous competition in which anyone can compete, with few or no rules, and in which the winner is unpredictable; as, when they began to distribute the free food, the orderly line of hungry recipients degenerated into a free-for-all.

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Etymology of 'Free-for-all'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Free-for-all" Quotes from Famous Books

... the order of the day: the industrial warfare of the sixties was a free-for-all. A mere reference to the status of manufactures in which the trust is now the all-prevailing fact will make the contrast clear. In 1865 thousands of independent companies were drilling oil in Pennsylvania and there were more than two hundred which were refining the product. ...

— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... a free-for-all," Stubby chuckled. "There'll be a lot of independent purse seiners. If the canneries don't pay good prices these independent fishermen, with their fast, powerful rigs, will seine the salmon under the packers' noses and run their catch down to the Puget ...

— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... last hour Paul had abandoned all idea of holding the scouts in any sort of regular formation, so that it had become, what William called, a "free-for-all," with khaki-clad lads stretched out along fifty yards of space, usually in small squads, and a rear ...

— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... evidence of any kind. There had been a free-for-all mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She also told the police that she had no suspicions of any sort. But Prokhor himself boasted afterwards: 'I,' says he, 'didn't do for Dunka that time, but I'll finish her off another time. She,' says ...

— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... a day passes but one sees new little nobodies everywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it—to the French Revolution—grabbing it calmly, and then using it deliberately before our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything that comes into their heads. The Syndicalists and Industrial Workers of the World have had the use of it last. The fact that the French Revolution was French and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with a Louis Sixteenth sort of person, ...

— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

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