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Free-for-all   Listen
noun
free-for-all  n.  
1.
A noisy and disordered fight conducted without rules.
Synonyms: brawl.
2.
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.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Free-for-all" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... a syndicate of Dempsey, Carpentier, and one of the Zoo gorillas had endeavoured to stay his progress at that moment, they would have had reason to consider it a rash move. Archie wanted to be elsewhere, and the blood of generations of Moffams, many of whom had swung a wicked axe in the free-for-all mix-ups of the Middle Ages, boiled within him at any attempt to revise his plans. There was a good deal of the loafer, but it was all soft. Releasing his hold when Archie's heel took him shrewdly on the shin, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... things, and wished for some way of getting even, and—and some one spoke of this breach of promise suit, and we—that is, I—got up the summons, and I told Ed Tootle to serve it on you at your orgy—you had no business to expect me to enter any free-for-all inebriates' competition—you know that, 'Gene! It may have been a little extreme as a joke; but if you'd laughed it off as you always do, nobody would have thought anything of it except to chaff you about it. But what do you do? You make as serious a ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... too much. To go out on a peaceful shopping expedition, and become involved in a free-for-all fight! Some one of us lost face by that episode, whether the official, Kwong, or myself, I'm not sure. There wasn't much prestige to the whole thing. Just one fact stands out clearly amidst that maze of swift ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... limp and heavy as possible, and it ended in a free-for-all scuffle which was finally shepherded into the dining-room by Mrs. O'Mara, who was laughing so herself that she had to ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... on the head who was holding him. Upon this the commanding officer told one of the guards to shoot him, which the man did very promptly. The bullet went clear through the Indian, and shot one of the interpreter's fingers off. After this little incident, there was a general free-for-all fight, in which the Indians were badly worsted. After this battle the Indians went south and were not troublesome for ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... saddling horses for circle resolved itself, as Weary remarked at the top of his voice to Pink, at his elbow, into "a free-for-all broncho busting tournament." For horses have nerves, and nothing so rasps the nerves of man or beast as a wind that never stops blowing; which means swaying ropes and popping saddle leather, and coat-tails flapping like wet sheets on a clothes line. Horses do ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the humblest citizen, the life of its chief executive is not safe, though guarded by detectives and surrounded by devoted friends. Until the country is rid of organized anarchy it would be well to abandon free-for-all hand-shaking. ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... and frightful epithets rained on him and with them rocks and vegetables. He removed his overcoat and stood calm and smiling. When he raised his voice, however, the grand assault was made. Only a double cordon of constables massed around the stage kept him from being overwhelmed. In the free-for-all fight that followed one man was killed ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... clearest progressive and liberal thought and forces of the twentieth century might be summed up as this freedom in a democracy of normals. A good formula which coincides with the technique of nature in the evolution of species. A fair fight, a free-for-all who are unhandicapped, is the motto of natural selection. Where civilization shakes hands with natural instinct, what but the happiest of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.



Words linked to "Free-for-all" :   scrap, fight, combat



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