| n.amer., austral. |
a brawl or fracas; a scene of chaos (Sherman's signature caused another donnybrook over the election of a speaker of the House when the 36th Congress convened in December 1859.
 wiktionary.org • This was no innocuous donnybrook but a veritable carnival of thuggee.
); a scene of uproar and disorder; a heated argument (Origin: Mid 19th century from the name of a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, formerly famous for its annual fair. Examples • raucous ideological donnybrooks lexico.com • People were accused of entering into the donnybrook without experience, knowledge, good faith, rationality, sobriety or even their own hitherto recognisable identities. • It will be interesting to see whether the ‘public use’ issue becomes a factor in the donnybrook that is brewing over the next Supreme Court nominee. • He was more upbeat, feeling the donnybrook had cleared the air. • Based on the Sunday morning talk shows, it appears that the nomination will be a donnybrook. • His impassioned diatribes are laced with the queasy petulance of someone who already knows he's lost the fight, going to the mat with a whine instead of a real donnybrook. • But a donnybrook is brewing between those that offer the new services and those that need to protect their old technology. • The race for a successor is a three-way donnybrook where anything could happen – including the election of another Independent. • This donnybrook marked the end of an unbroken series of six Republican presidential victories that reached back to Abraham Lincoln's first win in 1860. • What, then, is the alternative to a donnybrook?) |
