fencing
/ˈfɛnsɪŋ/ noun B2- The art or sport of duelling with swords, especially with the 17th- to 18th-century European dueling swords and the practice weapons descended from them (sport fencing).
- Material used to make fences, fences used as barriers or an enclosure. · Fencing was erected around the field to keep the horses in.
- The act of erecting fences, or enclosing within fences.
- The buying and receiving of stolen goods.
Plural fencings
From the library
There were collected and piled up all Albert’s successive caprices, hunting-horns, bass-viols, flutes—a whole orchestra, for Albert had had not a taste but a fancy for music; easels, palettes, brushes, pencils—for music had been succeeded by painting; foils, boxing-gloves, broadswords, and single-sticks—for, following the example of the fashionable young men of the time, Albert de Morcerf cultivated, with far more perseverance than music and drawing, the three arts that complete a dandy’s education, i.e., fencing, boxing, and single-stick; and it was here that he received Grisier, Cooks, and Charles Leboucher.
“Ah,” said he, “they have sent some fencing-master to fight with me.” The president, without answering, approached the witness who held the lantern, and raising his sleeve, showed him two wounds he had received in his arm; then opening his coat, and unbuttoning his waistcoat, displayed his side, pierced with a third wound.
“But if I do fight, you will surely not object to giving me a lesson or two in shooting and fencing?”
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