The AI-powered English dictionary
plural bouts
A period of something, especially one painful or unpleasant. quotations examples
The "King" responded well to this treatment and would have maintained 60 m.p.h. up the steepest part had it not been for a brief bout of slipping, which was quickly corrected by Driver Bailes ("Autumn leaves", he remarked laconically).
1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Part, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 105
Jackson won lasting fame for his treatment of an alcoholic's painful disintegration in his first novel, The Lost Weekend, in which he suggested that the root of his protagonist's bouts with the bottle could be found in his repressed homosexuality.
2001, Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp, page 14
(boxing) A boxing match. examples
(fencing) An assault (a fencing encounter) at which the score is kept. examples
(roller derby) A roller derby match. examples
A fighting competition. quotations examples
Then they had bouts of wrestling and of cudgel play, so that every day they gained in skill and strength.
1883, Howard Pyle, chapter V, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […]
(music) A bulge or widening in a musical instrument, such as either of the two characteristic bulges of a guitar. examples
(dated) The going and returning of a plough, or other implement used to mark the ground and create a headland, across a field. quotations examples
The outside bout of each land is ploughed two inches deeper, and from thence the water runs into cross furrows, which are dug with a spade […] I have an instrument of great power, called a scarifier, for this purpose. It is drawn by four horses, and completely prepares the land for the seed at each bout.
1809, “A Letter to Sir John Sinclair […] containing a Statement of the System under which a considerable Farm is profitably managed in Hertfordshire. Given at the request of the Board. By Thomas Greg, Esq.”, in The Farmer's Magazine, page 395
It is in this manner that the ploughs are reversed at the termination of each bout of the field.
1922, “An Ingenious One-Way Agrimotor”, in The Commercial Motor, volume 34, Temple Press, page 32
The last two rounds must be ploughed shallower, and on the last bout the strip left should be one furrow width for a two-furrow plough, two for a three-furrow, and so on. […]
1976, Claude Culpin, Farm Machinery, page 60
third-person singular simple present bouts, present participle bouting, simple past and past participle bouted
To contest a bout. examples
(colloquial) Aphetic form of about examples