[f. FIST sb.1]
† 1. intr. To fight with the fists. Obs.
a. 1300[?]. Salomon & Sat. (1848), 272.
| Þou most fist and fle ylome | |
| wiþ eye ant wiþ herte. |
1705. [see FISTING vbl. sb.].
2. trans. To strike with the fist, beat, punch.
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., II. i. 23. Fang. If I but fist him once: if he come but within my Vice.
1681. Dryden, Sp. Friar, V. ii. I saw him spurning and fisting her most unmercifully.
1876. Tennyson, Harold, I. i.
| The boy would fist me hard, and when we fought | |
| I conquer’d, and he loved me none the less. |
3. To grasp or seize with the fist; to handle. Now esp. Naut. † To fist about, to hand round.
1607. Shaks., Cor., IV. v. 131.
| We haue beene downe together in my sleepe, | |
| Vnbuckling Helmes, fisting each others Throat, | |
| And wak’d halfe dead with nothing. |
1685. Cotton, trans. Montaigne, I. 621. Neither is it [the Bible] a B for every one to fist, but the Study of Select Men set apart for that Purpose.
1701. Farquhar, Sir H. Wildair, II. i. I warrant they [salvers] were fisted about among his dirty levee of disbanded officers?
1840. R. H. Dana, Bef. Mast, 124. We had to fist the sail with bare hands.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Fist, to handle a rope or sail promptly.
1870. Meade, Ride N. Zealand, 356. They were very much surprised to see me take off my coat and fist an oar.
† 4. To fist (a person) with: to place in his hand, to make to accept. Obs. rare.
1599. Life Sir T. More, in Wordsw., Eccl. Biog., II. 85. For all theire importunate pressinge of him they could by no means fist him with one penny thereof.
Hence Fisting vbl. sb., the action of the vb.
1608. Shaks., Per., IV. vi. 177.
| To the choleric fisting of every rogue | |
| Thy ear is liable. |
1705. E. Ward, Hud. Rediv., I. I. 88. Each Zealot’s Purity consisting In bitter Words, and sometimes fisting.
