Library / English Dictionary

FIST

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A hand with the fingers clenched in the palm (as for hitting)

Synonyms:

clenched fist; fist

Classified under:

Nouns denoting body parts

Hypernyms ("fist" is a kind of...):

hand; manus; mitt; paw (the (prehensile) extremity of the superior limb)

Credits

 Context examples: 

This inn, the 'Mouton d'Or,' was kept in the old days by one Francois Gourval, who had a hard fist and a harder heart.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Their tallest trees are about seven feet high: I mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Your kidneys are two bean-shaped organs, each about the size of your fists.

(Kidney Diseases, NIH: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases)

A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then she came down the street with her eyes blazing, and I saw the crippled wretch standing by the lamp-post and shaking his clenched fists in the air as if he were mad with rage.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

An’ there was a man the same year he killed with a blow iv his fist.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

But fists were landing on faces the whole length of the car.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I forgot to mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)