Buzzsaw
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 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."
- 2 Someone or something that makes a loud, harsh, grinding or rasping noise, like that of a circular saw. slang
"No danger of these buzzsaws waking up, it was enough to make you wish for impaired hearing."
- 3 The MG 42 general-purpose machine gun. slang
"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."
- 4 A violently destructive attack. slang
"The changes ran into a buzzsaw of Congressional criticism."
- 5 One who attacks violently and/or mindlessly.
"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."
- 1 To cut with a circular saw. transitive
- 2 To spin rapidly like the blades of a circular saw. colloquial, intransitive
"The 7.62 tumblers would buzzsaw through the flimsy protection offered by the float."
- 3 To produce a loud, harsh noise like that of a circular saw. ambitransitive, colloquial
"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."
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
From buzz + saw.
Related phrases
More for "buzzsaw"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.