Fighting Talk: Boxing and the Modern Lexicon

by Bob Jones

Have you ever stopped to notice how often your local newspaper or favourite magazine uses the terms 'On the Ropes', 'The Gloves Are Off' and 'Knockout Punch'? How often TV newsreaders will say that a politician has 'Thrown His hat in the Ring', is a 'Big Hitter', is 'Taking it on the Chin', is 'Down for the Count' or has the 'Killer Instinct'?

Knight of the realm, leading businessman, colourful and controversial commentator, and boxing aficionado Sir Robert — Bob —Jones certainly has. Over a period of years he made careful note of how often terms cropped up and then retraced their etymological origins in boxing history.

The result is a lively, entertaining, and thought-provoking miscellany of boxing terms that are now part of our everyday English language. Some have strayed far from their original meanings, others are more frequently in use now than at any other time. Jones asks why that might be, and his answers are, well, a knockout.

560 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2013

About the author

Sir Robert ‘Bob' Jones — now New Zealand's largest private office building owner in Wellington and Auckland, and with substantial holdings in Sydney, totalling in excess of a billion dollars — is a property investor, author and former politician, who has written fiction as well as books on property investment, selections of his newspaper and magazine columns, and reminiscences of former prime minister Robert Muldoon.

While at Victoria University of Wellington, he earned a ‘blue' in boxing and contributed to a boxing column in the university's newspaper Salient. A multi-millionaire, Jones earned his wealth through investments in commercial property via his company Robt. Jones Holdings Ltd. He founded and led the New Zealand Party in 1983. In 1989 he was made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours, and in received the New Zealand 1990 Commemorative Medal.

Reviews

[Rory Braybrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and lively examination of the regular use of terms from the boxing ring in our everyday language.