"fight the good fight" meaning in English

See fight the good fight in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: fights the good fight [present, singular, third-person], fighting the good fight [participle, present], fought the good fight [participle, past], fought the good fight [past]
Etymology: A translation of the Koine Greek phrase ἀγωνίζου τὸν καλὸν ἀγῶνα τῆς πίστεως (agōnízou tòn kalòn agôna tês písteōs, “fight the good fight of faith”) in 1 Timothy 6:12 that appeared first in the Tyndale Bible, then in the King James Version. Etymology templates: {{der|en|grc-koi|-}} Koine Greek Head templates: {{en-verb|fight<,,fought> the good fight}} fight the good fight (third-person singular simple present fights the good fight, present participle fighting the good fight, simple past and past participle fought the good fight)
  1. To battle or try to achieve something for a noble cause. Wikipedia link: Tyndale Bible
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "grc-koi",
        "3": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "Koine Greek",
      "name": "der"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "A translation of the Koine Greek phrase ἀγωνίζου τὸν καλὸν ἀγῶνα τῆς πίστεως (agōnízou tòn kalòn agôna tês písteōs, “fight the good fight of faith”) in 1 Timothy 6:12 that appeared first in the Tyndale Bible, then in the King James Version.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fights the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fighting the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fought the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fought the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fight<,,fought> the good fight"
      },
      "expansion": "fight the good fight (third-person singular simple present fights the good fight, present participle fighting the good fight, simple past and past participle fought the good fight)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English cognate expressions",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English predicates",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter XII, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, pages 300–301:",
          "text": "\"My brethren,\" he said, \"since God has not given our people victory in the combat, it must be because he requires of us, his spiritual soldiers, to fight the good fight of martyrdom, [...]\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1912, Mary Roberts Rinehart, “God's Fool”, in Love Stories:",
          "text": "[W]ho had imagined that her instruments of healing were a thermometer and a prayer-book; and who found herself fighting the good fight with a bandage machine?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1983 December 17, William J. Hutchinson, “Whither Bl/GPA?”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 22, page 6:",
          "text": "Nothing said heretofore undervalues or denigrates the sacrifices and accomplishments of those who have been out of the closet and fought the good fight for gay rights (often alone and against incredible odds) for so long.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001 June 10, Walter Kim, “What Do You Tell The Kids?”, in Time, retrieved 2014-07-16:",
          "text": "Wouldn't it be nobler by far to fight the good fight with all the weapons available: a firm bass voice, a wagging finger, the Bible?",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To battle or try to achieve something for a noble cause."
      ],
      "id": "en-fight_the_good_fight-en-verb-encpuPAT",
      "links": [
        [
          "battle",
          "battle"
        ],
        [
          "achieve",
          "achieve"
        ],
        [
          "noble",
          "noble"
        ],
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Tyndale Bible"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "fight the good fight"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "grc-koi",
        "3": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "Koine Greek",
      "name": "der"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "A translation of the Koine Greek phrase ἀγωνίζου τὸν καλὸν ἀγῶνα τῆς πίστεως (agōnízou tòn kalòn agôna tês písteōs, “fight the good fight of faith”) in 1 Timothy 6:12 that appeared first in the Tyndale Bible, then in the King James Version.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fights the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fighting the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fought the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fought the good fight",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fight<,,fought> the good fight"
      },
      "expansion": "fight the good fight (third-person singular simple present fights the good fight, present participle fighting the good fight, simple past and past participle fought the good fight)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English cognate expressions",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English predicates",
        "English terms derived from Koine Greek",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter XII, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, pages 300–301:",
          "text": "\"My brethren,\" he said, \"since God has not given our people victory in the combat, it must be because he requires of us, his spiritual soldiers, to fight the good fight of martyrdom, [...]\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1912, Mary Roberts Rinehart, “God's Fool”, in Love Stories:",
          "text": "[W]ho had imagined that her instruments of healing were a thermometer and a prayer-book; and who found herself fighting the good fight with a bandage machine?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1983 December 17, William J. Hutchinson, “Whither Bl/GPA?”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 22, page 6:",
          "text": "Nothing said heretofore undervalues or denigrates the sacrifices and accomplishments of those who have been out of the closet and fought the good fight for gay rights (often alone and against incredible odds) for so long.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001 June 10, Walter Kim, “What Do You Tell The Kids?”, in Time, retrieved 2014-07-16:",
          "text": "Wouldn't it be nobler by far to fight the good fight with all the weapons available: a firm bass voice, a wagging finger, the Bible?",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To battle or try to achieve something for a noble cause."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "battle",
          "battle"
        ],
        [
          "achieve",
          "achieve"
        ],
        [
          "noble",
          "noble"
        ],
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Tyndale Bible"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "fight the good fight"
}

Download raw JSONL data for fight the good fight meaning in English (3.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.