bare-knuckle

English

Alternative forms

• bare knuckle

Adjective

bare-knuckle (not comparable)

1. (boxing) Without boxing gloves.
   • 2009, David Lindholm, Ulf Karlsson, Bare-Knuckle Boxer's Companion, →ISBN:

     The bare-knuckle boxing era ended in the early 20th century, when gloves were introduced, stricter rules implemented and oversight organizations formed.

   • 2012, Ken Shamrock, Richard Hanner, Inside the Lion's Den, →ISBN:

     In bare-knuckle fights, one of the most frequent injuries is a broken hand.

   • 2013, Eamon Dillon, Gypsy Empire, →ISBN, page 126:

     He was known as a tough bare-knuckle boxer and had already consolidated a reputation from his teenage years, when he had first thrown his fists in anger.

   • 2015, Patrick White, The Legends of Bare-knuckle Boxing: The History & the Champions, →ISBN:

     The difference between a street fight and a bare-knuckle boxing match is an accepted set of rules, such as not striking a downed opponent.

2. (by extension) Characterized by ruthlessly attacking or overpowering an opponent, especially when using underhanded techniques.
   • 2005, Henry C. Mitchell, The Intellectual Commons: Toward an Ecology of Intellectual Property, →ISBN, page 28:

     In one sense such bare-knuckle tactics reflect the fact that IP grants are (and are intended to be) monopolies.

   • 2007, Elliot D. Cohen, Bruce W. Fraser, The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-hungry Government are Turning America into a Dictatorship, →ISBN, page 278:

     In 2000 America witnessed the bare-knuckle tactics of the GOP firsthand in Florida — tactics that included intimidation of black voters, phony felon lists, hired thugs sent by Tom DeLay to stop the recount, a secretary of state who did all that could be done to push the election in Bush's favor, and so on.

   • 2010, Mary Lethert Wingerd, Kirsten Delegard, North Country: The Making of Minnesota, →ISBN, page ccxliii:

     The territory was bursting with political spoils and riches to be captured, and “old settlers” vied with newcomers for a place at the head of the line, encouraging bare-knuckle politics with a distinctively local cast.

   • 2013, Shock Theatre: Collected Speculative Fiction, 2002-2006, →ISBN, page 185:

     I'm telling you, all the cracks were already waiting to be slipped through, in every home, in every office, out into space, between haxor invention and bare-knuckle corporate crime.

   • 2013, Jeffrey Bloodworth, Losing the Center: The Decline of American Liberalism, 1968--1992, →ISBN:

     The body, however, failed to alter the bare-knuckle politics governing the nominating convention.

   • 2018, Geraint Howells, Annette Nordhausen, Deborah Parry, The Yearbook of Consumer Law 2007, →ISBN:

     Can one sustain an accusation that EC law serves to evacuate the public authorities in the Member States from the task of regulating the market inter alia in order to protect the consumer from the harsher excesses of bare-knuckle competition?

Translations

without gloves

• French : à poings nus

Verb

bare-knuckle (third-person singular simple present bare-knuckles, present participle bare-knuckling, simple past and past participle bare-knuckled)

1. To box without boxing gloves.
   • 1964, Time - Volume 84, Part 1, page 88:

     ...at 36 he is still able to bare-knuckle the swagger out of the biggest lumberjack in the Northwest.

   • 2013, Nick Towle, Blood is only Red Sweat, →ISBN, page 91:

     I hate bare-knuckling on anything but grass.

   • 2014, Katie McGarry, Take Me on, →ISBN, page 171:

     None of the fights I've been in have included advance notification so I bare-knuckled it.

2. To attack or overpower ruthlessly.
   • 2008, Jay Bynum, Sallad Dayes, →ISBN, page 105:

     “I'm not surprised,” she said, “but your will is strong and your sense of humor is great. They ought to bare-knuckle almost any problem you do have.

   • 2012, Raeanne Thayne, A Cold Creek Homecoming, →ISBN:

     Tess shivered, but she knew it wasn't at the prospect of winter just around the corner or that wind bare-knuckling its way under her jacket, but from remembering the icy cold blue of Quinn's eyes.

   • 2016, Ron Robin, The Cold World They Made, →ISBN, page 39:

     His associates at City College were the sons of Eastern European working-class Jews from the Lower East Side and the Brooklyn hinterlands; they huddled in the sweaty alcoves of City College, verbally bare-knuckling in both tone and tenor.