Dictionary

buzzsaw en · NOUN

Etymology

From buzz + saw.

Meanings

1. A circular saw.
   • Agriculture Secretary Edward T. Schafer is preparing to walk into a buzzsaw of criticism over American biofuels policy when he meets with world leaders to discuss the global food crisis next week. 2008 May 30, Andrew Martin, “Food Report Criticizes Biofuel Policies”, in New York Times:
2. (slang) Someone or something that makes a loud, harsh, grinding or rasping noise, like that of a circular saw.
   • In the darkness, Benny listened to the sounds of the street: a far-off police siren, a dog's growl, a hip-hop pulse blaring from a car stereo, the buzzsaw whine of the El. 2014, Wendy Ruderman, Barbara Laker, Busted:
   • No danger of these buzzsaws waking up, it was enough to make you wish for impaired hearing. 1979, Michael Bishop, Catacomb Years, page 112:
   • Nasal buzzsaws shook the sides of the tent as finally, they were all out for night. 2011, Phillip A. Elwood, Giant in the Hills, page 11:
   • Anyway, buzzsaw hardcore from both bands with nice 'n' trebly production, and each have some Japanese influences in there. 2006, Maximum Rocknroll - Issue 277, page 30:
3. (slang) The MG 42 general-purpose machine gun.
   • Golden tracers from the jaggering MG42 buzzsaw lit up the air like glitter, and from both directions there were bee-hive-volumes of whizzes and snaps as bullets passed through the air, in some cases only feet from them. 2012, Benjamin Blackie, Sea Dogs, page 56:
   • Suddenly, machine-gun rounds tore over their heads, stitching a neat row of holes in the wall above them, the weapon's unmistakable ripping report identifying it as a 'buzz saw', as the GIs had nicknamed the German MG42 because of its stupendous rate of fire. 2018, Mark Felton, Ghost Riders:
   • Cade braced its stock against his shoulder, sighted the moving shadows in the woods, and let the buzz saw chew into them. 2020, David Mack, The Shadow Commission:
   • On Omaha Beach, the Panzer Army locked up the beachhead with eight concrete bunkers, with their buzzsaw MG-42 machine guns that fired 1,500 rounds per minute, aimed from 35 pillboxes with automatic artillery pieces of different sizes. 2020, Daniel Altman, Fawn Zwickel, From Omaha Beach to Nuremberg: A Memoir of World War II, page 13:
4. (slang) A violently destructive attack.
   • The changes ran into a buzzsaw of Congressional criticism. 1983, TVI Journal - Volume 4, page 15:
   • We knew that we were headed into a buzzsaw and some of us might not come back, a thought so absurd and so real that it was overwhelming. 1997, Robert Peterson, Joni Peterson, J. Allen Kirsch, Rites of Passage: Odyssey of a Grunt, page 51:
   • The old wood and plasterboard vaporized under the buzzsaw of .30 caliber bullets. 2013, Stephen Hunter, Hot Springs:
   • But aware of it or not, Johnson was heading into a buzzsaw. 1995, Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train, page 322:
   • Landry's martyrdom was automatic and mostly unavoidable -- although Jerry, bless his heart, went into his initial press conference at Valley Ranch and walked right into his second media buzzsaw. 1994, Jimmy Johnson, Ed Hinton, Turning the Thing Around: My Life in Football, page 24:
   • Downsizings attack managers like an emotional buzzsaw. 1987, Paul Morris Hirsch, Pack Your Own Parachute, page 88:
5. One who attacks violently and/or mindlessly.
   • But the minute he arrived, he ran into a buzzsaw named Lee Iacocca. 2010, Gary Wolfram, Cars and Trucks, Markets and Governments, page 31:
   • Similarly , if mom or dad choose to do something other than play with the little feathered buzzsaws, as occasionally we humans do , the birds would have no choice but to "play" with whatever was handy: chairs, lamps, cabinets, pillows, or original Picasso... you get the idea. 1992, The Pet Bird Report - Volumes 2-4, page 10:
   • Perhaps it's habit, an ingrained autonomous component to feeding, a lingering artifact from when they were still alive, thinking creatures instead of walking buzzsaws. 2015, Jamie Mason, Kezzie of Babylon:
   • Apparently the jay was unaware that the hawk no longer had its hold because it became a buzzsaw of blue fury, slashing the hawk several more times. 1973, Kansas Fish and Game - Volumes 30-33, page 2:
   • So he keeps away from the intellectual buzzsaws; and, as both philology and philosophy grow ever more and more technical, the gap between them, if anything, widens. 1935, Ivor Armstrong Richards, Basic in Teaching: East and West, page 8:

Forms

Deriveds

Hitler's buzzsaw

buzzsaw en · VERB

Etymology

From buzz + saw.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To cut with a circular saw.
2. (colloquial, intransitive) To spin rapidly like the blades of a circular saw.
   • The 7.62 tumblers would buzzsaw through the flimsy protection offered by the float. 1990, Kyle Maning, Blood Storm, page 53:
3. (ambitransitive, colloquial) To produce a loud, harsh noise like that of a circular saw.
   • When the sun comes early through eastern windows and a single horsefly buzzsaws the air it is then I rise from bed my dreams of amputation, of teeth lost, cloaked in the amnesia of another day overwhelmed with trivia. 1981, Michael Hogan, The Broken Face of Summer: Poems:
   • A loud screeching sound buzzsaws the eerie silence of the day. 2014, Cody Toye, Evolution:

Forms