Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The practice of baiting or attacking bulls with dogs, a sport formerly very popular in England, but made illegal in 1835.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. the practice of baiting bulls, or rendering them furious, as by setting dogs to attack them.
Examples
“The novel has it all: an ingenious plot, ceaseless suspense, villains galore, tipsy priests, a bull-baiting, a stag hunt, several murders, the horrors of war, a brooding sense of evil and a glittering portrait of a fascinating age.”
The Washington Post: Chasing justice in Henry VIII's England
“They will know of the saloon only in the pages of history, and they will think of the saloon as a quaint old custom similar to bull-baiting and the burning of witches.”
“Near the top, the bear- and bull-baiting rings lie shrouded in darkness.”
Simon & Schuster: Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer
“Who would have thought, for example, that dogs could be bred for sheep-herding skills, or ‘pointing’, or bull-baiting?”
““Long life to the noble Captain!” cried the soldiers, as impatient to see the duel, as if it had been a bull-baiting.”
“Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of these five-and-forty years in the general manner of living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were still the national amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen herself, on many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor.”
“In the early seventeenth century staves were used in the ‘sport’ of bull-baiting, where dogs were set against bulls.”
“Adjoining his castle was an amphitheatre where the Prince indulged in bull-baiting, rat-hunting, and other ferocious sports.”
“If the middle-classes could enjoy themselves without seeing a higher purpose, it seems unlikely that the lower and labouring classes would have, or could have, sought to find a higher meaning in activities such as cock-fighting, ratting, dog-fighting and bull-baiting which, although outlawed early in Victoria's reign continued for many years after her ascension to the throne.”
“When I talks of dog-fighting, I of course means rat-catching, and badger-baiting, ay, and bull-baiting too, just as when I speaks religiously, when I says one I means not one but three.”
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