bulldoze

verb

Etymology: From earlier bulldose (noun, literally “bull-dose, a dose fit for a bull”), equivalent to bull + dose.

1. To destroy with a bulldozer.

   “He's certainly very chirpy for a man whose house has just been bulldozed down.”

   “Chulalongkorn [University] set to bulldoze historic Chinese-Thai shrine, build condos”

2. To push someone over by heading straight over them. Often used in conjunction with "over".

   “He just ran across the field bulldozing everyone over.”

3. To push through forcefully.

   “For the second time in a week, Wenger's team gave themselves an encouraging platform. In the 11th minute Theo Walcott drilled in a corner, and Olivier Giroud bulldozed through unopposed to thump the ball goalwards.”

   “Born in the mid-2010s, the concept of the girlboss promised a utopia where women could bulldoze into workplaces, pull up a seat at male-dominated tables and become a celebrated CEO on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List by the ripe age of 23 (and do it all, of course, wearing a fuchsia blazer and a balayage hairdo).”

4. To push into a heap, as a bulldozer does.

   “Again the animal had bulldozed all of its bedding into a heap at one end of its cage.”

   “There stood a low yellow compact machine which apparently did the digging and bull-dozed back the earth.”

5. To shoot down an idea immediately and forcefully.

   “That was a good suggestion, but you just bulldozed it.”

   “After the EAC published its report last summer, and the media finally began to take an interest, it looked as if all this might change. But then the issue, like so many others, was bulldozed by Brexit.”

6. To intimidate; to restrain or coerce by intimidation or violence; used originally of the intimidation of black voters in Louisiana.

   “Whatever may be the long delayed result of the election of 1876, there is one point which has not yet been commented on, and that is, its effect upon our language. There is no surer indication of the mightiness of a national event than this, that a number of new expressions and new words have been born into our common speech, through the strong travail of the times. You will find in the mouths of the people and the press at least three combinations of words which, in the strongest sense they are now used in, have never been there before. One of them is “Counted out,” or “Counted in.” Another is, “Wait for the returns,” and a third, pure slang, is, “bulldozed.” […] ”Wait for the returns,” has drifted from politics into business, religion, home and society, and bulldozed is the common word for intimidation in any of the extraordinary occupations of life.”

   “The standard of qualifications for teachers has been very greatly advanced, till at the present day not one in ten of the old pedagogues who taught “readin’, ritin’ and ‘rithmetic,” and bulldozed unruly pupils with the birch, the beech or the willow rod, or in their absence the ferrule, would be able to procure a third grade or any grade certificate to be able to teach in the most secluded rural “deestrict” in all of the western states.”