monomachist

Etymology

From monomachy or monomachia + -ist.

monomachist means one who fights in single combat; a duellist. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why this word is great

MONOMACHIST — [Noun] One who fights in single combat; a duelist. From monomachy or monomakhia (from Greek μονομαχία, monomakhia, "single combat," from μόνος, monos, "alone" + μάχη, makhē, "battle") + the English suffix -ist (denoting an agent). Unlike a gladiator, a performer in orchestrated spectacle, or a soldier, a component of a tactical mass, the monomachist is a purist of singular confrontation. It is Hector stepping before Troy to face Achilles, the twenty measured paces at misty dawn, the bone-jarring transmission of force from one blade into another's parry—a ritual where the chaotic world contracts to the space between two beating hearts, a private argument meant to resolve a public world.

noun

One who fights in single combat; a duellist.“These colors, falling upon the throng of monomachists and loungers much as we see the aureate beams of divine favor fall on hierarchs in art, lent them an appearance insubstantial and thaumaturgic, as though they had all been produced a moment before by the flourish of a cloth and would vanish into the air again at a whistle.”