body blow

See also: body-blow

English

Alternative forms

body-blow

Pronunciation

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Noun

body blow (plural body blows)

A severely injurious or damaging physical strike or impact.
- 2018 October 17, Drachinifel, Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918‎, archived from the original on 4 August 2022, retrieved 4 August 2022, 14:13 from the start:
  The fight is not all one-sided. Lion is taking a savage beating as the two flagships trade body blows almost independent of the furious carronade going on behind them.
- 2021 May 5, Drachinifel, Battle of Samar - What if TF34 was there?‎, archived from the original on 8 August 2022, retrieved 7 August 2022, 30:41 from the start:
  There are numerous near misses and various secondary-battery shells flying and setting small fires and causing shrapnel damage to both ships... but these are somewhat irrelevant compared to the body blows that they're dishing out to each other at the moment.
1. (boxing) A hard punch struck to the torso.
  - 1896, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 11, in Rodney Stone:
    He led at Berks's head, as he came rushing in, and missed him, receiving a severe body blow in return.
(idiomatic, by extension) A serious setback; a traumatizing event which prevents or hinders continuation of an activity.
- 1910, Stewart Edward White, chapter 43, in The Rules of the Game:
  "I can hardly exaggerate the body blow to the Service such a decision would give. Nobody will believe in it again."
- 1955 Sep. 5, "Medicine: Cutter Verdict," Time (retrieved 7 April 2014):
  The polio vaccination program took a body blow last spring when the disease developed in children injected with vaccine from the Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, Calif.
- 2009 March 21, Mark Mazzetti, "The Downside of Letting Robots Do the Bombing," New York Times (retrieved 7 April 2014):
  [D]rone strikes . . . have delivered body blows to Al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan without risking a single American soldier on the ground.

References

body blow at OneLook Dictionary Search