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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