fight shy
fight shy verb: to avoid meeting at a close distance or at close quarters; to keep out of reach, to avoid.
Verb
fight shy (third-person singular simple present fights shy, present participle fighting shy, simple past and past participle fought shy)
- To avoid meeting at a close distance or at close quarters; to keep out of reach, to avoid.
- Maybe she is imprisoned there and cannot get out: it would be a terrible fate, would it not, Signorina? Me, I think it is better to fight shy of the heathen gods."1903, Margaret Sherwood, Daphne, an Autumn Pastoral
- "That's worse than useless. He's drunk. And we'll only get him against us, for he'd order us to keep out of the mess. He'd fight shy of entangling alliances. He'd forbid me to send, for he's got his ship to clear from that port."1909, Arthur Stringer, “The Movement in Retreat”, in The Gun-runner, New York, N.Y.: B. W. Dodge & Company
- Synonyms:
- steer clear
Synonyms of fight shy
Forms of fight shy
| third-person singular present | fights shy |
|---|---|
| present participle | fighting shy |
| past participle | fought shy |
| past | fought shy |
Questions about fight shy
- What does fight shy mean?
- Fight shy means to avoid meeting at a close distance or at close quarters; to keep out of reach, to avoid.
- What part of speech is fight shy?
- Fight shy is a verb.
- What is the past tense of fight shy?
- The past tense of fight shy is fought shy.
Words near fight shy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fight shy (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: “fight shy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fight_shy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.