donnybrook

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The Word of the Day for December 3 is: 

donnybrook   \DAH-nee-brook\   noun
     *1 : free-for-all, brawl 
     2 : a usually public quarrel or dispute 

Example sentence:
     Out on the ice a donnybrook had broken out, and it took 
quite some time for the referees to separate the brawling hockey 
players and restore order.

Did you know?
     The Donnybrook Fair was an annual event held in Donnybrook -
- then a suburb of Dublin, Ireland -- from the 13th to the 19th 
centuries. The fair was legendary for the vast quantities of 
liquor consumed there, for the number of hasty marriages 
performed during the week following it, and, most of all, for 
the frequent brawls that erupted throughout it. Eventually, the 
fair's reputation for tumult was its undoing. From the 1790s on 
there were campaigns against the drunken brawl the fair had 
become. The event was abolished in 1855, but not before its name 
had become a generic term for a free-for-all.


*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.