"free-for-all" meaning in English

See free-for-all in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

IPA: /ˈfɹiːfəɹɔːl/ [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈfɹiːfɚɔːl/ [General-American] Audio: en-us-free-for-all.ogg , en-au-free-for-all.ogg
Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} free-for-all (not comparable)
  1. (of a fight, competition etc.) Open to anyone and with no or few rules. Tags: not-comparable Related terms: knockdown-dragout
    Sense id: en-free-for-all-en-adj-YYxC8my8

Noun

IPA: /ˈfɹiːfəɹɔːl/ [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈfɹiːfɚɔːl/ [General-American] Audio: en-us-free-for-all.ogg , en-au-free-for-all.ogg Forms: free-for-alls [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} free-for-all (plural free-for-alls)
  1. Chaos; a chaotic situation lacking rules or control. Translations (chaos): pagaille [feminine] (French), chacun pour soi (French), foire d’empoigne [feminine] (French), piglia-piglia [feminine] (Italian), chaosas [masculine] (Lithuanian), salve-se quem puder [masculine] (Portuguese), casa da mãe Joana [feminine] (Portuguese), competiție pentru toți [feminine] (Romanian), încăierare generală [feminine] (Romanian), huggsexa [common-gender] (Swedish), hilabo (Tagalog)
    Sense id: en-free-for-all-en-noun-ckG-TBGT Disambiguation of 'chaos': 99 1
  2. (video games) Deathmatch, sometimes specifically one in which every player is pitted against all the others. Categories (topical): Video games, Violence
    Sense id: en-free-for-all-en-noun-gINDUfYT Disambiguation of Violence: 23 13 64 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with French translations, Terms with Italian translations, Terms with Lithuanian translations, Terms with Portuguese translations, Terms with Romanian translations, Terms with Swedish translations, Terms with Tagalog translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 7 17 77 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 10 12 79 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 7 13 81 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 4 6 89 Disambiguation of Terms with French translations: 10 11 79 Disambiguation of Terms with Italian translations: 7 10 82 Disambiguation of Terms with Lithuanian translations: 10 12 78 Disambiguation of Terms with Portuguese translations: 10 13 78 Disambiguation of Terms with Romanian translations: 10 12 78 Disambiguation of Terms with Swedish translations: 9 11 79 Disambiguation of Terms with Tagalog translations: 10 12 77 Topics: video-games
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: kick bollocks scramble [UK, informal], law of the jungle

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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    {
      "form": "free-for-alls",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
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  "head_templates": [
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      "_dis1": "0 0",
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          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 134:",
          "text": "[…] this was a consequence of building Tubes by means of a competitive free-for-all. Each company wanted to expand its territory at the expense of the others.",
          "type": "quote"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "chaos",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "pagaille"
        },
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          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "fr",
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          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "fr",
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          "code": "pt",
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          "_dis1": "99 1",
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          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "ro",
          "lang": "Romanian",
          "sense": "chaos",
          "tags": [
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        },
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          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "ro",
          "lang": "Romanian",
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          "word": "încăierare generală"
        },
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          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
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          "tags": [
            "common-gender"
          ],
          "word": "huggsexa"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "tl",
          "lang": "Tagalog",
          "sense": "chaos",
          "word": "hilabo"
        }
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          "orig": "en:Video games",
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            "Software",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
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        {
          "ref": "1913 October, Jack London, The Valley of the Moon, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC:",
          "text": "Men, as well as women, were springing in to the rope and pulling. No longer was it team against team, but all Oakland against all San Francisco, festooned with a free-for-all fight.",
          "type": "quote"
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          "text": "Then Lucy told him about the great passion of her father—about the long, time-honored custom of free-for-all races, and the great races that had been run in the past; […]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 October 27, Lauren Hirsch, quoting Elon Musk, “Elon Musk Reaches Out to Advertisers Ahead of Deadline for Twitter Deal”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "But, he added, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences!”",
          "type": "quote"
        }
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        "(of a fight, competition etc.) Open to anyone and with no or few rules."
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      "word": "kick bollocks scramble"
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        "English terms with usage examples"
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      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "chaos",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "pagaille"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "chaos",
      "word": "chacun pour soi"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "chaos",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "foire d’empoigne"
    },
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      "sense": "chaos",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
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      "tags": [
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      "sense": "chaos",
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      "sense": "chaos",
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      "sense": "chaos",
      "tags": [
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    },
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      "code": "ro",
      "lang": "Romanian",
      "sense": "chaos",
      "tags": [
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      ],
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      "sense": "chaos",
      "word": "hilabo"
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  "word": "free-for-all"
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        "(of a fight, competition etc.) Open to anyone and with no or few rules."
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Download raw JSONL data for free-for-all meaning in English (6.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (05fdf6b and 9dbd323). 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.