different between battle vs shindy

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?bæt?l/, [?bat???]
• (US) enPR: b?t'l, IPA^(key): /?bætl?/, [?bæ???], [bæt??]
• Rhymes: -æt?l
• Hyphenation: bat?tle

Etymology 1

From Middle English batel, batell, batelle, batayle, bataylle, borrowed from Old French bataille, from Late Latin batt?lia, variant of battu?lia (“fighting and fencing exercises”) from Latin battu? (“to strike, hit, beat, fight”), from a Gaulish root from Proto-Indo-European *b?ed?- (“to stab, dig”). Doublet of battalia and battel.

Displaced native Old English ?efeoht.

Alternative forms

• batail, battel, battell (14th–17th centuries)

Noun

battle (plural battles)

1. A contest, a struggle.
   • 1611, Bible (KJV), Ecclesiastes, 9:11:
2. (military) A general action, fight, or encounter, in which all the divisions of an army are or may be engaged; a combat, an engagement.
3. (military, now rare) A division of an army; a battalion.
4. (military, obsolete) The main body of an army, as distinct from the vanguard and rear; the battalia.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Hayward to this entry?)

Derived terms

Related terms

• battlement

Translations

Verb

battle (third-person singular simple present battles, present participle battling, simple past and past participle battled)

1. (intransitive) To join in battle; to contend in fight

   Scientists always battle over theories.

   She has been battling against cancer for years.

2. (transitive) To fight or struggle; to enter into a battle with.

   She has been battling cancer for years.

Derived terms

• battle it out

Related terms

• embattle

Translations

Etymology 2

From Early Modern English batell, probably from Middle English *batel (“flourishing”), from Old English *batol (“improving, tending to be good”), from batian (“to get better, improve”) + -ol ( +? -le).

Alternative forms

• battil, battill, battel, baittle, bettle, batwell

Adjective

battle (comparative more battle, superlative most battle)

1. (Britain dialectal, chiefly Scotland, Northern England, agriculture) Improving; nutritious; fattening.

   battle grass, battle pasture

2. (Britain dialectal, chiefly Scotland, Northern England) Fertile; fruitful.

   battle soil, battle land

Derived terms

• overbattle

Verb

battle (third-person singular simple present battles, present participle battling, simple past and past participle battled)

1. (transitive, Britain dialectal, chiefly Scotland, Northern England) To nourish; feed.
2. (transitive, Britain dialectal, chiefly Scotland, Northern England) To render (for example soil) fertile or fruitful

Related terms

• batful
• batten

Further reading

• battle in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• battle in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “battle”, in Online Etymology Dictionary

Anagrams

• batlet, battel, tablet

English

Etymology

Uncertain; compare shinney, shinty.

Noun

shindy (countable and uncountable, plural shindies or shindys)

1. A shindig.
   • 1907, Robert W. Chambers, The Younger Set, New York: D. Appleton & Co., [1]

     She and Eileen are giving a shindy for Gladys—that's Gerald's new acquisition, you know. So if you don't mind butting into a baby-show we'll run down.
2. (slang) An uproar or disturbance; a spree; a row; a riot.
   • 1848-50, William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis, Chapter LXXIII, [2]

     " […] I've married her. And I know there will be an awful shindy at home."

   • 1886, Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, [3]

     I always do sit with my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company of my sisters, my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy—I should say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject—that I have to give in and take them out—my hands I mean.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 1, [4]

     […] it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy.

   • 1984, Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, HarperPerennial, 1993, Chapter Two, p. 23,

     Nurse Solveig inserted the thermometer and disappeared—disappeared (I timed it) for more than twenty minutes. Nor did she answer my bell, or come back, until I set up a shindy.

3. hockey; shinney
   • 1841, Anonymous, The Living and the Dead: A Letter to the People of England, on the State of their Churchyards, London: Whittaker & Co., p. 31, [5]

     […] what is even more disgusting still, I have seen children playing at "shindy" in a Churchyard, a skull used as a substitute for a ball, and large fragments of leg or arm-bones in the place of sticks.

4. (US, dialect, dated) A fancy or liking.
   • 1855, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Nature and Human Nature, Chapter V, [6]

     "Father took a wonderful shindy to her, for even old men can't help liking beauty. […] "