fracas \FREY-kuhs, noun:

A noisy, disorderly disturbance or fight; riotous brawl; uproar.

Two or three people who were not there during the fracas poked their heads in at the door to sympathize but that made Mrs. Turner madder.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Never was he present at any gathering without some sort of a fracas occurring thereat. Either he would require to be expelled from the room by gendarmes, or his friends would have to kick him out into the street.
— Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

Fracas is derived from the Italian word fracasso meaning “to smash.” It entered English in the 1720s.


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