Word of the Day

Thursday, July 24, 2003

donnybrook

\DON-ee-brook\ , noun;

A brawl; a free-for-all.

A heated quarrel or dispute.

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Quotes:

But this was the beginning of Tommy's years of fighting back, a period that ended in a donnybrook conducted all over the O'Connor house.

-- Tracy Kidder, Home Town

Wine and talk flow freely, so much so that the meal ends with a Rooney family donnybrook over, typically enough, religion and politics.

-- Howard Frank Mosher, "24 Hours in Due East, S.C.", New York Times, April 7, 1991

The author finds few villains in "West Virginia's Battle of the Books," which describes a donnybrook over the content of public school textbooks during the mid-70's in the "seemingly placid community" of Charleston, W.Va.

-- Kaye Northcott, "Round Up the Usual Enigmas", New York Times, February 23, 1992

Origin:

A donnybrook is so called after Donnybrook, Ireland, a suburb of Dublin that once held an annual fair known for its brawls.