Definition
nounA hand with the fingers clenched or curled inward.
Sentence Examples
The stockholders are making money hand over fist.
The speaker banged the table with his fist.
He shook his fist in a symbolic gesture of defiance.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English fist, from Old English fȳst (“fist”), from Proto-West Germanic *fūsti (“fist”), of uncertain origin, but possibly from Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- (“to punch; to prick, stab”).
Cognates
Cognate with Yola fest, hist (“fist”), Saterland Frisian Fäste, Fääste (“fist”), West Frisian fûst (“fist”), Central Franconian Fuus (“fist”), Cimbrian bòista, vòista (“fist”), Dutch vuist (“fist”), German Faust (“fist”), Low German Fuust (“fist”), Luxembourgish Fauscht (“fist”), Vilamovian faojst, faust (“fist”), Yiddish פֿויסט (foyst, “fist”); also Irish fuaigh (“sew, stitch”), Latin pugnus (“fist”), Ancient Greek πυγμή (pugmḗ, “fist”), πύκτης (púktēs, “boxer, pugilist”), Lithuanian kumštis (“fist”), Bulgarian пестник (pestnik, “fist; punch”), Czech pěst (“fist”), Polish pięść (“fist”), Russian пясть (pjastʹ, “metacarpus”), Serbo-Croatian пе̏ст, pȅst, пѐсница, pèsnica (“fist”), Slovak päsť (“fist”), Slovene pest (“fist”). More at five.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"More light then Culver in the Faulcons fist."
— 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 34:
"City look stronger, fitter and more motivated than last season and even at this early stage the gap feels like a sizeable advantage. Yes, it is way too early to make snap judgments about the impact on the title race. It has, however, been long enough to ascertain that Manuel Pellegrini’s team are going to make a much better fist of it this time."
— 2015 August 16, Daniel Taylor, The Guardian:
"With the rise of cognitive neuroscience, the time may be coming when we can make a reasonable fist of mapping down from an understanding of the functional architecture of the mind to the structural architecture of the brain."
— 2005, Darryl N. Davis, Visions of Mind: Architectures for Cognition and Affect, page 144:
"He noticed Ada's trick of hiding her fingernails by fisting her hand or stretching it with the palm turned upward when helping herself to a biscuit."
— 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin, published 2011, page 29:
"I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when I was before the mast."
— 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 34”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: