body blow

plural body blows · alternative body-blow

1. A severely injurious or damaging physical strike or impact.

   The fight is not all one-sided. Lion is taking a savage beating as the two flagships trade body blows almost independent of the furious carronade going on behind them.

   2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 14:13 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2022

   1 more example

   There are numerous near misses and various secondary-battery shells flying and setting small fires and causing shrapnel damage to both ships... but these are somewhat irrelevant compared to the body blows that they're dishing out to each other at the moment.

   2021 May 5, Drachinifel, 30:41 from the start, in Battle of Samar - What if TF34 was there?, archived from the original on 08 Aug 2022

   1. boxingA hard punch struck to the torso.

      He led at Berks's head, as he came rushing in, and missed him, receiving a severe body blow in return.

      1896, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 11, in Rodney Stone

2. broadlyidiomaticA serious setback; a traumatizing event which prevents or hinders continuation of an activity.

   "I can hardly exaggerate the body blow to the Service such a decision would give. Nobody will believe in it again."

   1910, Stewart Edward White, chapter 43, in The Rules of the Game

   3 more examples

   The polio vaccination program took a body blow last spring when the disease developed in children injected with vaccine from the Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, Calif.

   1955 September 5, “Medicine: Cutter Verdict”, in Time, retrieved 07 Apr 2014

   And the government received a psychological body-blow with the crushing defeat of the Blakeney government in neighboring Saskatchewan.

   1982 December 11, Frances Russell, “Economic performance buoys Pawley’s position”, in The Vancouver Sun (The Weekend Sun), Vancouver, BC, page A6

   [D]rone strikes . . . have delivered body blows to Al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan without risking a single American soldier on the ground.

   2009 March 21, Mark Mazzetti, “The Downside of Letting Robots Do the Bombing”, in New York Times, retrieved 07 Apr 2014