duel

From Medieval Latin duellum (“fight between two men, duel”), itself from Old Latin duellum (“war, fight”), which survived in Classical Latin as a rare byform of bellum and was later reinterpreted as “duel” by unetymological association with duo (“two”).^[1][2]

May have entered English through Middle French duel. (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdjuːəl/
• (General American) enPR: d(y)o͞oʹəl, IPA^(key): /ˈd(j)uəl/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (UK):

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• Homophones: dual, jewel (yod-coalescence)
• Rhymes: -uːəl, -ʊəl
• Hyphenation: du‧el

duel (plural duels)

1. Arranged, regular combat between two private persons, often over a matter of honor.
   • 1844 January–December, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “In Which I Show Myself to Be a Man of Spirit”, in “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume III, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1856, →OCLC, page 36:

     I have often thought since, how different my fate might have been, had I not fallen in love with Nora at that early age; and had I not flung the wine in Quin’s face, and so brought on the duel.

   • 2004 July 5, Jason George, “A Duel Evokes Dueling Emotions Over a Unique Place in History”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     It has been 200 years, minus a few days, since Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel here. Weehawken and the duel have been tied together in an often-uncomfortable knot ever since.

2. Historically, the wager of battle (judicial combat).
3. (by extension) Any battle or struggle between two contending persons, forces, groups, or ideas.

   a sniper duel

   • 2019 March 6, Drachinifel, 25:33 from the start, in The Battle of Samar (Alternate History) - Bring on the Battleships!‎^[2], archived from the original on 20 July 2022:

     But it leaves them with a few destroyers, the American destroyer force is falling back, and then you have the two cruiser lines with their respective battleships coming in for the big duel.

   • 2021 May 1, John Naughton, “Apple comes out swinging in the duel of the data titans”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     Apple comes out swinging in the duel of the data titans [title]

duel (third-person singular simple present duels, present participle (US) dueling or (UK) duelling, simple past and past participle (US) dueled or (UK) duelled)

1. To engage in a battle.

   The two dogs were duelling for the bone.

   • 2019 February 19, “Lightsaber duelling registered as official sport in France”, in The Guardian‎^[4]:

     The country’s fencing federation has officially recognised lightsaber duelling as a competitive sport, granting the weapon from George Lucas’s space saga the same status as the foil, epee and sabre, the traditional blades used at the Olympics.

• duello
• dual

• ULed, leud, lude, lued

Borrowed from Italian duello, from Medieval Latin duellum (“fight between two men”), under influence from Latin duo.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [duˈɛl]

duel m (plural duels)

1. duel

• duelista

• “duel”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “duel”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025.
• “duel” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “duel” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Borrowed from Middle French duel, from Latin duellum (“war”).(Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

• IPA^(key): /duɛl/, [d̥uˈɛlˀ]

duel c (singular definite duellen, plural indefinite dueller)

1. duel

• tvekamp

• duellere

• duel on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^da

• duwel (obsolete)

Borrowed from Middle French duel, from Latin duellum (“duel; war”), archaic form of bellum (“war”). In Mediaeval Latin the meaning shifted from “war” to “duel” because of folk etymology associating it with duo (“two”).

• IPA^(key): /dyˈ(ʋ)ɛl/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: du‧el
• Rhymes: -ɛl

duel n (plural duels, diminutive duelletje n)

1. a duel

• tweegevecht
• tweekamp

• duelleren
• duellist

Borrowed from Latin duālis.

• IPA^(key): /dɥɛl/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɥɛl

duel (feminine duelle, masculine plural duels, feminine plural duelles)

1. dual (having two components)

• dualité

duel m (plural duels)

1. duel (battle)
2. (grammar) dual

• “duel”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• dol

Probably from Late Latin dolus, from Latin dolor (“pain”), or from Vulgar Latin *dolium, from Latin cordolium (“sorrow of the heart”), from dolor.

• IPA^(key): /du͡ɛl/

duel oblique singular, m (oblique plural dueus or duex or duels, nominative singular dueus or duex or duels, nominative plural duel)

1. sadness; grief; sorrow
   • c. 1170, Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide:

     Son plor et son duel demenant

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• French: deuil
• Norman: deu

Borrowed from French duel, from Latin duellum.

duel n (plural dueluri)

1. duel