duke out

present singular third person dukes out · participle present duking out · participle past duked out · past duked out

1. slangtransitiveTo fight, especially with fists; to knock out (someone).

   Both perfect homes are destroyed—and yet the two men remain effectively passive, locked in hang-ups while assorted protégés and allies do all the duking out and legwork.

   2016 May 23, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “Apocalypse pits the strengths of the X-Men series against the weaknesses”, in The Onion AV Club

   1 more example

   How does the media love Twitter? Let us count the ways: as a tech platform practically indispensable to the work of newsgathering; as a metrics system designating clear numerical value to once-squishy concepts of popularity and esteem; as a gossip-fueled lunchroom of the elites more or less available for public participation; as an arena for duking out industry controversies ranging from #MeToo to opinions about opinion pages.

   April 14 2022, Delia Cai, “Severance, the New York Times’s Twitter Guidelines, and the Forever Illusion of Work-Life Balance”, in Vanity Fair