Word.ws English Dictionary

body-blow

body-blow is the alternative form of body blow.

Meaning of body blow

Noun

body blow (plural body blows)

  1. A severely injurious or damaging physical strike or impact.
    • The fight is not all one-sided. Lion is taking a savage beating as the two flagships trade body blows almost independent of the furious carronade going on behind them.2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 14:13 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2022
    1. A hard punch struck to the torso.
      • He led at Berks's head, as he came rushing in, and missed him, receiving a severe body blow in return.1896, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 11, in Rodney Stone
  2. (broadly, idiomatic) A serious setback; a traumatizing event which prevents or hinders continuation of an activity.
    • "I can hardly exaggerate the body blow to the Service such a decision would give. Nobody will believe in it again."1910, Stewart Edward White, chapter 43, in The Rules of the Game

Forms of body-blow

pluralbody-blows

Questions about body-blow

What is body-blow the alternative form of?
Body-blow is the alternative form of body blow.

Words near body-blow in the dictionary

  1. body weights
  2. body wire
  3. body wires
  4. body wrap
  5. body wraps
  6. body-blow
  7. body-blows
  8. body-build
  9. body-builded
  10. body-builder
  11. body-builders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: body-blow (page history and authors); body blow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “body-blow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/body-blow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.