{"id":58,"date":"2021-09-22T20:55:09","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T20:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/?p=58"},"modified":"2021-10-12T19:16:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T19:16:18","slug":"put-up-your-dukes-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/put-up-your-dukes-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Put Up Your Dukes - Meaning, Usage and Origin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The meaning of an idiom can be deduced by simply studying the words that are used in the phrase. When saying \u201cput up your dukes\u201d, one might thing the literal translation would be to actually put forward a duke, as in a person of royalty; however, when used as an idiom, the phrase means to \u201cput up your fists\u201d to get ready for a fist fight.<\/p>\n<p>For example, someone who is aggravated to the point that they want to engage in physical violence, they might say to the person they are arguing with \u201cput up your dukes\u201d to prepare to fight.<\/p>\n<h2>Examples of \u201cput up your dukes\u201d in a sentence<\/h2>\n<p>So, how can the idiom \u201cput up your dukes\u201d be used in a sentence? Here are a few examples that illustrate the appropriate use of this figure of speech:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was so mad that I told the guy to \u201cput up his dukes\u201d!<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re going to keep talking like that, you better put up your dukes!<\/li>\n<li>The guys were in such a heated debate and the next thing I knew, one guy yelled \u201cput up your dukes!\u201d to the other.<\/li>\n<li>The kid got detention because he told another kid in the lunchroom to \u201cput up his dukes\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are just a few examples of how this figure of speech can be used in a sentence. As you can see, in each example, the term is used to invite someone to put up their fists so as to prepare for a physical altercation.<\/p>\n<h2>Origins of the phrase \u201cput up your dukes\u201d?<\/h2>\n<p>The word \u201cdukes\u201d means \u201chands or fists\u201d. Since there doesn\u2019t appear to be an obvious link between the words, it\u2019s important to understand how \u201cdukes\u201d came to mean \u201chands\u201d or \u201cfists\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The first documented use of the word \u201cdukes\u201d to mean \u201chands\u201d was in the mid-1800s, in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Samuel E Chamberlain, an American soldier, used the word \u201cdukes\u201d in his 1859 memoir <em>My Confession, recollections of a Rogue<\/em>. The sentence in which he used the word is as follows:<\/p>\n<p><em>I landed a stinger on his \u201cpotato strap\u201d with my left \u201cduke\u201d, drawing the \u201cClaret\u201d and \u201csending him to grass\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is often said that the term \u201cdukes\u201d in reference to fists was derived from a Cockney rhyming slang, \u201cDuke of Yorks\u201d and \u201cyorks\u201d meant fingers or hands. It doesn\u2019t seems like there would be a link between \u201cyorks\u201d and \u201cforks\u201d or \u201cfingers\u201d; however, \u201cforks\u201d was used as a slang term for \u201cfingers\/hands\u201d since the 1700s. In the Etymological English Dictionary, which was written by Nathan Bailey in 1737, the word \u201cforks\u201d was recorded as a slang word for \u201cpickpocket\u201d.<\/p>\n<h2>Phrases\/Idioms similar to \u201cput up your dukes\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>There are a few other terms that mean \u201cput up your dukes\u201d. Examples include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I challenge you to a duel<\/li>\n<li>Put up your fists<\/li>\n<li>I challenge you to a fist fight<\/li>\n<li>Put up or shut up<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-2\">The meaning of an idiom can be deduced by simply studying the words that are used in the phrase. When saying \u201cput up your dukes\u201d, one might thing the literal translation would be to actually put forward a duke, as in a person of royalty; however, when used as an idiom, the phrase means to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english-grammar-lessons.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}