[f. as prec. + -ING2.]
1. That wrestles or contends, in various senses. Also transf.
a. 1547. Surrey, Æneid, II. 531. As wrastling windes, out of dispersed whirl Befight themselues.
1593. Nashe, Christ’s T., Wks. (Grosart), IV. 156. Your paine shalbe … wrastling, tearing, and intollerable.
1597. C. Middleton, Fam. Hist. Chinon, vi. 38. His Father…, whome wrestling age had almost now layed along in hys graue.
1605. Z. Jones, trans. Loyer’s Specters, 12. There was amongst the Greeks, a Diuell … named … the wrastling Diuell.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XIX. 361. All their stall flies up in wrastling flame.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., X. 465. The thundring noyse of my wrestling voyce.
1738. Wesley, Ps. XXIV. vii. Thou the true wrestling Jacob art.
1847. Tennyson, Princess, VII. 266. The wrestling thews that throw the world.
1889. W. Armstrong, Wrestling, 232. Wrestling men are impulsive beings.
1892. W. H. Hudson, Naturalist in La Plata, 366. How I saw and lost the noble wrestling frog [= wrestler frog].
2. Marked or characterized by strife or contention, or by earnest striving.
a. 1593. Marlowe, trans. Lucan, 299. His graue looke appeasd The wrastling tumult.
1620. T. Peyton, Glasse of Time, I. 50.
| That none by wrong oppression might | |
| Be crost, by cunning, wringing, wrestling [printed wresting] guile. |
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm., v. (1857), 98. It was impossible to avoid being struck with its wrestling earnestness and fervour.
1859. Geo. Eliot, A. Bede, xlvii. She poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity of a last pleading.
