Pugilism is an old, rather grand word for boxing: the sport of fighting with the fists, usually in a ring, now with gloves. It names the practice, not the person. The person is a pugilist. You meet pugilism in history books, in sports writing that wants to sound nineteenth-century, and in phrases like the golden age of pugilism. Ordinary people today just say boxing. Though actually, writers still reach for it because it sounds weighty; a newspaper may use pugilism when boxing would do. It comes from Latin pugil, a fist-fighter, from the word for fist. So it belongs with pugilist and pugilistic, and further back with pugnacious, which also sits on that Latin fist. It does not belong with the pug dog. If a line glosses this word as a boxer, that is the mix-up this entry is for: pugilism is the sport.

拳擊（書面舊稱，指這項運動，不是人）