bully:
1. Or: bullie , a 16 th century term of endearment and familiarity for a sweetheart .Etymology: From the Dutch bul or boel, a lover of either sex .
2. From the 17 th century onward, a protector (pimp); originally the strongarm in a brothel and the supposed husband to one of its whores. A precursor of the modern day bouncer or bruiser . Defined by Grose in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811): ' A bully to a bawdy-house; one who is kept in pay, to oblige the frequenters of the house to submit to the impositions of the mother-abbess , or bawd ; and who also sometimes pretends to be the husband of one of the ladies, and under that pretence extorts money from greenhorns, or ignorant young men, whom he finds her with .'
See also: badger-game .
3. Currently, a person of either sex , more often a male, who uses strength or power to coerce, persecute and/or oppress others physically or morally by fear and threat of superior force.
See Also: badger game, clean it up, clean up, flash man, wedgy
Quotes Containing bully:
Molly Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck) to Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) in Union Pacific (1939): ''You think I''m an outrageous flirt . (...) But didn''t you ever know that flirting get''s into a woman''s blood like fighting get''s into a man''s? Now a girl begins coquetting to discover if she has the power. Then she goes looking, like a fighter after a bully , for the hardest man to conquer, but it''s never the man she wants, it''s the pleasure of bringing him to her feet.''
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