Barry Also Shuns Brawl Mr. Barry, whom Mr. Bennett did not attack by name, again refused today to engage in verbal fisticuffs.

As is often the case in these news groups, verbal fisticuffs, called flame wars, broke out.

Having been out of the country, I'm still catching up with Mr. Dole's round robin of verbal fisticuffs.

Then he would explode; and the two men would engage in knockdown drag out verbal fisticuffs, which usually terminated when Pacheco called Onofre a "screaming elitist fairy!"

This year, verbal fisticuffs broke out between those who supported Al Gore versus those who supported Ralph Nader.

In the second half, he throws down the gauntlet to all comers and will take any subject from A to Z as the audience pit their wits against him in bouts of verbal fisticuffs.

Gone were the self-aggrandizing speeches, the barbed questions meant to undermine the visibly uncomfortable schools chancellor, the verbal fisticuffs that would often follow back in the days of a powerful, unapologetically political Board of Education.

And word has come to me from Truman-Image Central that the one-day verbal fisticuffs impute no hard feelings.

The verbal fisticuffs could be partly the fault of political consultants, said Michael Goldman, himself a Democratic consultant, with some chagrin.

She was, when it came down to verbal fisticuffs, easy meat.