rough-and-tumble

Questions about rough-and-tumble

What does rough-and-tumble mean?

rough-and-tumble means "disorderly fighting". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in rough-and-tumble?

rough-and-tumble has 4 syllables and divides as roug-h-and--tum-ble under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for rough-and-tumble?

Close synonyms include hassle, scuffle, tussle, dogfight, bare-knuckle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is rough-and-tumble a common word?

rough-and-tumble is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.