Tussle

//ˈtʌsəl// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A physical fight or struggle.

    "And the visiting side appeared to settle quickly as Wayne Routledge, who had a tough tussle with Stevenage left-back Scott Laird, delivered an early cross that Barton drilled goalwards, forcing a decent save from Chris Day."

  2. 2
    disorderly fighting wordnet
  3. 3
    A conflict, an argument, a disagreement.
Verb
  1. 1
    To have a tussle.

    "The two sets of fans were tussling before the game."

  2. 2
    make messy or untidy wordnet
  3. 3
    fight or struggle in a confused way at close quarters wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
fighthasslescuffleactionaerial combataffray

Example

More examples

"Robin nerved himself for yet another tussle."

Etymology

Related to tousle.

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