In several song lyrics, I have encountered the phrase, "Put up your dukes." In one recitation I read that someone, "Duked it out". If, as I suspect, "dukes" means fists and, if "duking it out" means to strike with one's fists, where did that expression come from? I thought it might be a tribute to the Marquis of Queensbury, who stole credit for codifying the rules of prize fighting but is a Marquis a Duke? (Perhaps, a Marquis is to a Duke as a raven is to a writing desk.) It would be poetic if the phrase was a reference to John Wayne, that two fisted reactionary whose nickname was Duke. But I'm pretty sure that the term predates Stagecoach by a lot. Dies anyone have any ideas or is this to be one of those unsolved mysteries that keep popping up on A&E?