Strike
A strike is an unarmed attack with hand, arm or elbow in order to cause harm to an opponent. An attack with the hand closed into a fist is often called a punch. A strike with a foot or leg is called a kick. Punches are usually a bit weaker than kicks, but faster to deliver.
Strikes are employed in many martial arts, notably boxing and muay thai. Few martial arts employ no strikes at all, wrestling is one of them. In most arts, strikes are complemented by kicks and grappling.
Strike is the generic name for a blunt, crushing attack made with or without a
weapon. Striking weapons include the
club, the
mace and the
warhammer and is probably the oldest category of weapons known to humans.
A
strike is a deliberate absence from work. See
strike action.
A military
strike is a limited attack on a specified target. Strikes are used, amongst other things, to render facilities inoperable, to assassinate enemy leaders and to limit supply to enemy troops. An air strike is a military strike made using
explosives delivered from an
aircraft, often a
bomber,
ground attack aircraft, or
strike fighter.
The
strike of a geological unit is the compass direction along the plane of the unit where the unit has zero
dip. As any surface that is not horizontal will have two such directions, convention states that the direction of strike is taken as
anti-clockwise from the dip-direction.
In
baseball, a
strike is a mark against a batter, three of which will cause him to
strikeout. See
strike (baseball statistics).
In
bowling, a
strike occurs when players knock down all the pins with their first ball of a frame.
In the trick-taking card game Ambition, a
strike is the penalty incurred by a player who takes the most points in a round.
(Ambition's object is to take as many points in a round as possible, without taking the most. It's thus best to score second
in each round.) A player loses when s/he incurs three strikes.