different between bully vs tyrant

English

Etymology

From 1530, as a term of endearment, probably a diminutive ( +? -y) of Dutch boel (“lover; brother”), from Middle Dutch boel, boele (“brother; lover”), from Old Dutch *buolo, from Proto-Germanic *b?lô (compare Middle Low German bôle (“brother”), Middle High German buole (“brother; close relative; close relation”) (whence German Buhle (“lover”)), Old English B?la, B?lla (personal name), diminutive of expressive *b?- (“brother, father”). Compare also Latvian b?linš (“brother”). More at boy.

The term acquired negative senses during the 17th century; first ‘noisy, blustering fellow’ then ‘a person who is cruel to others’. Possibly influenced by bull (“male cattle”) or via the ‘prostitute's minder’ sense. The positive senses are dated, but survive in phrases such as bully pulpit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?b?li/
• Rhymes: -?li

Noun

bully (countable and uncountable, plural bullies)

1. A person who is intentionally physically or emotionally cruel to others, especially to those who are weaker or have less power or privilege. [from late 17th c.]

2. A noisy, blustering, tyrannical person, more insolent than courageous; one who is threatening and quarrelsome.
3. A hired thug.
   • 1849, John McLean, Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory, pp. 42-3:

     Mr. Fisher returned from town... he had learnt that our opponents intended to shift the scene of operations to the Chats... We understood that they had hired two bullies for the purpose of deciding the matter par voie de fait. Mr Fisher hired two of the same description, who were supposed to be more than a match for the opposition party.

   Synonyms: henchman, thug

4. A sex worker’s minder.

   Synonyms: pimp; see also Thesaurus:pimp

   • 2009, Dan Cruikshank, Secret History of Georgian London, Random House, p. 473:

     The Proclamation Society and the Society for the Suppression of Vice were more concerned with obscene literature […] than with hands-on street battles with prostitutes and their bullies […].

5. (uncountable) Bully beef.
6. (obsolete) A brisk, dashing fellow.
7. The small scrum in the Eton College field game.
8. Various small freshwater or brackishwater fish of the family Eleotridae; sleeper goby.
9. (obsolete or dialectal, Ireland and Northern England) An (eldest) brother; a fellow workman; comrade
10. (dialectal) A companion; mate (male or female).

    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:friend

11. (obsolete) A darling, sweetheart (male or female).

    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:sweetheart
12. (field hockey) A standoff between two players from the opposing teams, who repeatedly hit each other's hockey sticks and then attempt to acquire the ball, as a method of resuming the game in certain circumstances. Also called bully-off.
13. (mining) A miner's hammer.

Translations

Verb

bully (third-person singular simple present bullies, present participle bullying, simple past and past participle bullied)

1. (transitive) To intimidate (someone) as a bully.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:intimidate

2. (transitive) To act aggressively towards.

   Synonyms: push around, ride roughshod over

Translations

Adjective

bully (comparative bullier, superlative bulliest)

1. (US, slang) Very good.

   Synonyms: excellent; see also Thesaurus:excellent

   • 1916, The Independent (volumes 35-36, page 6)

     She is a bully woman, not only a good mother, but a wonderful in-law

2. (slang, obsolete) Jovial and blustering.

   Synonym: dashing

   • 1597, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor Act II, scene iii:

Derived terms

• bully boy
• bully pulpit

Translations

Interjection

bully

1. (often followed by for) Well done!

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:well done

Translations

Further reading

• bully on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English bully, itself a derivation of Dutch boel (“lover; brother”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bu.li/
• Hyphenation: bul?ly

Noun

bully m (plural bully's)

1. (field hockey) bully (way of resuming the game with a standoff between two opposing players who repeatedly hit each other's sticks, then try to gain possession of the ball)

Spanish

Noun

bully m (plural bullys or bullies or bully)

1. bully

English

Wikispecies

Etymology

From Middle English tyraunt, tiraunt, tyrant, tyrante, from Old French tyrant, from the addition of a terminal -t to tiran (cp. French tyran) via a back-formation related to the development of French present participles out of the Latin -ans form, from Latin tyrannus (“despot”), from Ancient Greek ???????? (túrannos, “usurper, monarch, despot”), of uncertain origin.

Pronunciation

• enPR: t??r?nt
  • (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /?ta???nt/
• Hyphenation: ty?rant

Noun

tyrant (plural tyrants)

1. (historical, Ancient Greece) A usurper; one who gains power and rules extralegally, distinguished from kings elevated by election or succession.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, The third Part of Henry the Sixt, with the death of the Duke of York, III iii 71:

     To proue him Tyrant, this reason may suffice, That Henry liueth still.

   • 1980, Michel Austin & al., Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece, 142:

     The reappearance of tyranny [in the 4th century BC] had many reasons... one of the main causes was the development of antagonism between rich and poor; tyrants came to power exploiting a social and political imbalance within the state.

   • 1996, Roger Boesche, Theories of Tyranny, from Plato to Arendt, 4:

     Ancient Greek tyrannies appeared once more in great numbers with the breakdown of the polis in the period from the fourth to the second centuries [BC]. These later tyrannies tended to rely on a more narrow class base and to use a brutal military rule, and thus writers could use the words tyrant and tyranny, with their modern connotations of evil and cruelty, to describe them accurately.

2. (obsolete) Any monarch or governor.
   • 1737, William Whiston translating Josephus, History of the Jewish Wars, I xii §2:

     Cassius... set tyrants over all Syria.

3. A despot; a ruler who governs unjustly, cruelly, or harshly.
   • 1587, Philip Sidney and Arthur Golding, A woorke concerning the trewnesse of the christian religion, translating Philippe De Mornay, XII 196:

     Tyrannes...be but Gods scourges which he will cast into the fyre when he hath done with them.

   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar, V iv 5:

     I am the Sonne of Marcus Cato, hoe.
     A Foe to Tyrants, and my Countries Friend.

   • 1888, James Bryce, The American Commonweath, I iv 42:

     They [viz., the Framers of the American Constitution] held England to be the freest and best-governed country in the world, but were resolved to avoid the weak points which had enabled King George III. to play the tyrant, and which rendered English liberty, as they thought, far inferior to that which the constitutions of their own States secured.

4. (by extension) Any person who abuses the power of position or office to treat others unjustly, cruelly, or harshly.
   • c. 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, II ii 161:

     A plague vpon the Tyrant that I serue

   • 1817, Mary Mitford in Alfred L'Estrange, The life of Mary Russell Mitford (1870), II i 2

     […] a sad tyrant, as my friends the Democrats sometimes are.

5. (by extension) A villain; a person or thing who uses strength or violence to treat others unjustly, cruelly, or harshly.
   • c. 1507, William Dunbar, Poems, 95:

     That strang vnmercifull tyrand [Death].

   • 1526, Tyndale's Bible, 1 Tim. I 13:

     I was a blasphemar, and a persecuter, and a tyraunt.

   • 1528, Thomas Paynell translating Arnaldus de Villa Nova in Joannes de Mediolano, Regimen Sanitatis Salerni:

     A pike (called the tyranne of fishes).

   • c. 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Cymbeline, I i 85:

     O dissembling Curtesie! How fine this Tyrant Can tickle where she wounds?

   • 1847, A. Helps, Friends in Council, I viii 132:

     Public opinion, the greatest tyrant of these times.

6. The tyrant birds, members of the family Tyrannidae, which often fight or drive off other birds which approach their nests.
   • 1731, Mark Catesby, The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, I 55:

     The Tyrant... The courage of this little Bird is singular.

   • c. 1841, Swainson, Penny Cyclopaedia, XXI 415 2:

     The lesser tyrants (Tyrannulae) are spread over the whole of America, where they represent the true flycatcher... The tyrants are bold and quarrelsome birds, particularly during the season of incubation.

   • 1895, Alfred Newton, A Dictionary of Birds:

     Tyrant or Tyrant-bird, Catesby applied it solely to...the King-bird..., but apparently as much in reference to its bright crown...as to its tyrannical behaviour to other birds.

Synonyms

• (Greek ruler): archon, basileus, aisymnetes
• (unjust or strict ruler or superior): autocrat, dictator, despot, martinet
• (bird): tyrant bird, tyrant flycatcher, tyrant shrike, king bird, bee martin

Derived terms

Related terms

• tyranness
• tyrannical
• tyrannicide, tyrannicidal
• tyrannous
• tyranny

Translations

Descendants

• ? Welsh: teirant

Adjective

tyrant

1. (uncommon) Tyrannical, tyrannous; like, characteristic of, or in the manner of a tyrant.
   • c. 1530, John Rastell, Pastyme of People

     He was most tirant & cruell of all emperours.

   • c. 1600, William Shakespeare, As you Like it, I ii 278:

     Thus must I from the smoake into the smother,
     From tyrant Duke, vnto a tyrant Brother.

   • 1775, Abigail Adams, letter in Familiar Letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution (1876), 124:

     ...a reconciliation between our no longer parent state, but tyrant state, and these colonies.

Verb

tyrant (third-person singular simple present tyrants, present participle tyranting, simple past and past participle tyranted)

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To act like a tyrant; to be tyrannical.
   • a. 1661, Thomas Fuller, Of Fancy

     Let thy judgment be king, but not tyrant over it

2. (transitive, obsolete) To tyrannize.

References

Further reading

• tyrant in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• tyrant in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• tyrant at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• tranty

Middle English

Noun

tyrant

1. Alternative form of tyraunt