buzzsaw

See also: buzz-saw and buzz saw

English

Etymology

From buzz +‎ saw.

Noun

buzzsaw (plural buzzsaws)

1. A circular saw.
   • 2008 May 30, Andrew Martin, “Food Report Criticizes Biofuel Policies”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     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. (slang) Someone or something that makes a loud, harsh, grinding or rasping noise, like that of a circular saw.
   • 1979, Michael Bishop, Catacomb Years, page 112:

     No danger of these buzzsaws waking up, it was enough to make you wish for impaired hearing.

   • 2006, Maximum Rocknroll - Issue 277, page 30:

     Anyway, buzzsaw hardcore from both bands with nice 'n' trebly production, and each have some Japanese influences in there.

   • 2011, Phillip A. Elwood, Giant in the Hills, page 11:

     Nasal buzzsaws shook the sides of the tent as finally, they were all out for night.

   • 2014, Wendy Ruderman, Barbara Laker, Busted:

     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.

3. (slang) The MG 42 general-purpose machine gun.
   • 2012, Benjamin Blackie, Sea Dogs, page 56:

     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.

   • 2018, Mark Felton, Ghost Riders:

     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.

   • 2020, David Mack, The Shadow Commission:

     Cade braced its stock against his shoulder, sighted the moving shadows in the woods, and let the buzz saw chew into them.

   • 2020, Daniel Altman, Fawn Zwickel, From Omaha Beach to Nuremberg: A Memoir of World War II, page 13:

     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.

4. (slang) A violently destructive attack.
   • 1983, TVI Journal - Volume 4, page 15:

     The changes ran into a buzzsaw of Congressional criticism.

   • 1987, Paul Morris Hirsch, Pack Your Own Parachute, page 88:

     Downsizings attack managers like an emotional buzzsaw.

   • 1994, Jimmy Johnson, Ed Hinton, Turning the Thing Around: My Life in Football, page 24:

     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.

   • 1995, Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train, page 322:

     But aware of it or not, Johnson was heading into a buzzsaw.

   • 1997, Robert Peterson, Joni Peterson, J. Allen Kirsch, Rites of Passage: Odyssey of a Grunt, page 51:

     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.

   • 2013, Stephen Hunter, Hot Springs:

     The old wood and plasterboard vaporized under the buzzsaw of .30 caliber bullets.

5. One who attacks violently and/or mindlessly.
   • 1935, Ivor Armstrong Richards, Basic in Teaching: East and West, page 8:

     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.

   • 1973, Kansas Fish and Game - Volumes 30-33, page 2:

     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.

   • 1992, The Pet Bird Report - Volumes 2-4, page 10:

     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.

   • 2010, Gary Wolfram, Cars and Trucks, Markets and Governments, page 31:

     But the minute he arrived, he ran into a buzzsaw named Lee Iacocca.

   • 2015, Jamie Mason, Kezzie of Babylon:

     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.

Derived terms

• Hitler's buzzsaw

Verb

buzzsaw (third-person singular simple present buzzsaws, present participle buzzsawing, simple past and past participle buzzsawed)

1. (transitive) To cut with a circular saw.
2. (intransitive, colloquial) To spin rapidly like the blades of a circular saw.
   • 1990, Kyle Maning, Blood Storm, page 53:

     The 7.62 tumblers would buzzsaw through the flimsy protection offered by the float.

3. (transitive, intransitive, colloquial) To produce a loud, harsh noise like that of a circular saw.
   • 1981, Michael Hogan, The Broken Face of Summer: Poems:

     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.

   • 2014, Cody Toye, Evolution:

     A loud screeching sound buzzsaws the eerie silence of the day.