bully

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A person who deliberately frightens or hurts weaker people

   A playground bully pushed the little girl off the swing.

2. 2
   verb

   To frighten or hurt someone weaker, often repeatedly

   He was bullied at school for being small.

3. 3
   verb

   To force someone to do something by threatening them

   They bullied me into giving them my lunch money.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Bully entered English in the 16th century, probably from Dutch boele, “lover,” and was initially an affectionate term like “sweetheart.” By the end of the 17th century it could mean “admirable” or “jolly,” and it later developed the general sense “first-rate,” which survives in bully for you. The usual modern sense also dates from the late 17th century and probably arose from bully as an informal term for a male friend, lad, or “one of the boys.” The bully in bully beef is unrelated and is a mid-18th-century alteration of French bouilli, “boiled.”

From 1530, as a term of endearment, probably a diminutive ( + -y) of Dutch boel (“lover; brother”), from Middle Dutch boel, boele (“brother; lover”), from Old Dutch *buolo, from Proto-Germanic *bōlô (compare Middle Low German bôle (“brother”), Middle High German buole (“brother; close relative; close relation”) (whence German Buhle (“lover”)), Old English Bōla, Bōlla (personal name), diminutive of expressive *bō- (“brother, father”). Compare also Latvian bālinš (“brother”). More at boy. The term acquired a negative connotation during the 17th century; first ‘noisy, blustering fellow’ then ‘a p…

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary