A martial art is a trained fighting method practised as a sport. Study a martial art.
Most are as much about discipline and grading as about fighting anybody. A martial art teaches how to fall safely before it teaches anything else.
1nounmartial artA trained fighting method practised as a sport.
“He took up a martial art at forty and stayed with it.”
martial art is a sport.
Martial, of war, from Mars the Roman god; the phrase was used in English before it was applied to Asian traditions.
Chinese
武術
Japanese
武術
English, today
martial art
Japanese 武術, which is itself borrowed from Chinese 武術. However, the term had been already mentioned in Pope's Iliad (1715, 4.360), and in Sotheby's Iliad (1831, book 6).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA