Countercuff

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A polemical response. archaic, rare

    "In Poetaster, or The Arraignment (printed 1602) Jonson gave a countercuff to his antagonists by ridiculing Marston as Crispinus and Dekker as Demetrius, and presenting himself as Horace."

Example

More examples

"In Poetaster, or The Arraignment (printed 1602) Jonson gave a countercuff to his antagonists by ridiculing Marston as Crispinus and Dekker as Demetrius, and presenting himself as Horace."

Etymology

From counter- + cuff (“blow, hit”), first used in the title of the 1589 polemical tract A Countercuffe giuen to Martin Iunior by the pseudonymous "venturuous, hardie, and renowned" Cavaliero Pasquill.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.