Word.ws English Dictionary

pugilists

pugilists is the plural of pugilist.

Meaning of pugilist

Noun

pugilist (plural pugilists)

  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!1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick
    Synonyms:
    pug
  2. (figuratively) 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?2010, Kirk Victor, National Journal, volume 42, number 35, page 4

Questions about pugilists

What is pugilists the plural of?
Pugilists is the plural of pugilist.

Words near pugilists in the dictionary

  1. pugilist
  2. pugilistic
  3. pugilistical
  4. pugilistically
  5. pugilistics
  6. pugilists
  7. pugillare
  8. pugillares
  9. pugillaris
  10. pugils
  11. Pugin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pugilists (page history and authors); pugilist (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-pugilists.wav.

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