raised fist
- noun
:
puño en alto
- Coming to the river, I spotted a huge torso, with a raised fist, sticking out of the water.
Examples
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One of the pioneering books in the field had a raised fist on the cover, and it was called Computer Lib.
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He raised his fist to the crowd.
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One of the pioneering books in the field had a raised fist on the cover, and it was called Computer Lib.
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Politics was handshakes and memoranda, raised fists and voices, laws and filibusters, trials, land, food, money, bombs, deals.
Fiction book (1991) -
I remember the signs he used to teach me: a raised fist (rather than an open hand) for stopping a backing truck, tapping the appropriate shoulder if a surveying post needed to be moved to the right or left.
Fiction book (1994) -
As the refrain spread west to the San Francisco Bay Area, where sympathetic student protestors awaited, the Black Panther Party pledged an inclusive "All power to the people," punctuated by a raised fist.
Academic text (2014) -
During the protest, she raised fist to show solidarity with the movement.
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The athlete celebrated his victory by raising fist high in the air.
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In the photo from the demonstration, several participants raised fists in defiance.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally combines 'raised' (elevated) and 'fist' (closed hand), so a B1 learner who knows both words can derive the physical meaning of a hand held up. However, the conventional symbolic sense of protest, defiance or solidarity is culturally grounded and not fully predictable from the parts alone, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Raised fist may come from early worker protests, where people lifted a closed hand to show strength and unity. A closed hand, the fist, held high for everyone to see looks strong and public, so the gesture came to mean 'defiance' or 'solidarity'.
