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One who engages in combat. "The mighty combatants." Milton. A controversy which long survived the original combatants. Macaulay

Any person connected with an army, or within the lines of an army, who does not make it his business to fight, as any one of the medical officers and their assistants, chaplains, and others; also, any of the citizens of a place occupied by an army; also, any one holding a similar position with respect to the navy.…

Prepared for battle; combatant; warlike. Spenser. -- n.

or one in which the parties engaged are not armies. Single combat, one in which a single combatant meets a single opponent, as in the case of David and Goliath; also a duel.

(a) (Prize Fighting) To step up to the scratch or mark made in the ring to be toed by the combatants in beginning a contest; hence: (b) To meet an antagonist or a difficulty bravely. [Colloq.] -- To come to time. (a) (Prize Fighting) To come forward in order to resume the contest when the interval allowed for rest is o…

either with or without a following noun; as, each of you or each one of you. "Each of the combatants." Fielding.

A screen for the combatants in ships. [Obs.] Up with your fights, and your nettings prepare. Dryden. Running fight, a fight in which the enemy is continually chased; also, one which continues without definite end or result.

One who fights; a combatant; a warrior. Shak.

Strength or power war; hence, a body of land or naval combatants, with their appurtenances, ready for action; -- an armament; troops; warlike array; -- often in the plural; hence, a body of men prepared for action in other ways; as, the laboring force of a plantation. Is Lucius general of the forces Shak.…

Of or pertaining to gladiators, or to contests or combatants in general.

A felling by a knock, as of a combatant, or of an animal.

Using a noose, as a gladiator. [Obs. or R.] Retiary and laqueary combatants. Sir T. Browne.

A fight in which the combatants are mingled

In the English naval service, the second rank attained by a combatant officer after a term of service as naval cadet. Having served three and a half years in this rank, and passed an examination, he is eligible to promotion to the rank of lieutenant.

Hence: To hold apart; to stand between; to intervene betwixt, as combatants. The stumbling night did part our weary powers. Shak.

f., in Cuba, the Philippines, etc., during the revolution of 1895-98, one of the rural noncombatants who were concentrated by the military authorities in areas surrounding the fortified towns, and later were reconcentrated in the smaller limits of the towns themselves.

Crying for mercy, as a combatant in the trial by battle; yielding; cowardly; mean-spirited; craven. "This recreant knight." Spenser.

ervice as an officer or a private; one who serves in an army; one of an organized body of combatants. I am a soldier and unapt to weep. Shak.

To separate combatants by intervening. [Obs.] When he [the angel] sees half of the Christians killed, and the rest in a fair way of being routed, he stickles betwixt the remainder of God's host and the race of fiends. Dryden.

t with a lance; to practice the military game or exercise of thrusting with a lance, as a combatant on horseback; to joust; also, figuratively, to engage in any combat or movement resembling that of horsemen tilting with lances. He tilts With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast. Shak. Swords out, and tilting one a…