From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdueldu‧el1 /ˈdjuːəl $ ˈduːəl/ noun [countable] 1 PMWFIGHTa fight with weapons between two people, used in the past to settle a quarrel The officer challenged him to a duel.2 DISAGREEa situation in which two people or groups are involved in an angry disagreement a verbal duel
Examples from the Corpus
duel• Did he really fight a duel with bowie knives in a riverside faro den?• In 1779, Decatur was killed in a duel.• When the Marquis again states the impossibility, despite his love for her { quote } Juan challenges him to a duel.• Ninety-eight years after the first Molyneux-Cribb duel, a black man ascended to the apogee of sporting achievement.• And yet you plot away and think you can have some kind of... of duel?• Bob Welch won a pitching duel with Jack Morris by the score of 3-1.• It would be silly to try to represent the duel between the Miller and the Reeve as merely good-natured fraternal leg-pulling.• Hoping that the Marquis will marry his daughter, he suspends the duel.• His two interceptions Sunday broke the back of the Pittsburgh Steelers as Dallas won the duel in the desert, 27-17.• The duel was continuous and completely silent.• A verbal duel at the conference showed the depth of disagreement between the two countries.duelduel2 verb (duelled, duelling British English, dueled, dueling American English) [intransitive] PMWFIGHTto fight a duel→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
duel• And this was true - for only mature Battle Brothers were permitted to duel.• Tonia Kwiatkowski and Kyoko Ina duel for the third place on the podium.• A case of duelling legal directories is going to trial.• He wasn't up to the fancy footwork required for duelling on the high seas.• But the briefest conversation with Shahi Smart reveals some one college admissions officers might well duel over.• I liked his liking, the exuberance of banjos duelling through the hollow bedroom walls when he was home.• In June 1719 two fashionable doctors duelled with swords.Origin duel1 (1400-1500) Medieval Latin duellum, from (influenced by duo “two”) Latin bellum “war” 