Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

buzz saw en · NOUN

Meanings

  1. A powerful, noisy, motorized saw, typically having a rotary blade with large teeth, sometimes portable and sometimes mounted into a table.
    • The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood 1916, Robert Frost, Out, Out–:
    • [T]hree inmates were freed today by accomplices who descended on a prison in central France in a helicopter, then used a buzz saw to rip through security netting. 2003 April 14, John Tagliabue, “Another Daring Jailbreak Embarrasses French Government”, in New York Times, retrieved 27 May 2014:
    • A population in full song can exceed 100 decibels, roughly the level of a circular buzz saw at full throttle. 1987 May 25, David Brand, “Tick, Buzz, It's That Time Again Locusts?”, in Time, retrieved 27 May 2014:
    • The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest. 1905, Henry Adams, chapter 12, in The Education of Henry Adams:
  2. A type of noisemaker in the form of a spinning disc spun on an untwisting string like a whirligig.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
buzz saws Number=Plur lexicographic
buzz-saw alternative lexicographic

Deriveds

glacial buzz saw

Relateds

circular saw

Synonyms

circular saw