bullying

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Persistent actions meant to make another person's life unpleasant.

   Bullying in the workplace can drive good employees to quit.

   After months of online bullying, he reported the accounts that kept targeting him.

   Similarharassment, abuse, persecution, victimization

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of bully.

   The company was accused of bullying smaller suppliers into accepting lower prices.

   A teacher caught two students bullying a classmate behind the gym.

   Note

   The verb always needs a target, so this form takes an object, the person or group on the receiving end, and can add an into-phrase naming what they are pushed to do: bullying suppliers into lower prices. After be it marks an action in progress (they were bullying him); after a preposition it is a gerund (accused of bullying a classmate). With no object at all, the word is acting as a noun.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The use of intimidation to force a person into doing something, especially repeatedly.

   The small nation refused to bow to its larger neighbor's bullying over the disputed border.

   Weeks of bullying from his manager finally pushed him into signing the unfair contract.

   Similarintimidation, coercion, browbeating, pressure

   Note

   Here the bullying has a goal: pressure meant to make someone give way or do something, which is why the word stretches so easily to nations and politics. Scott Neuman and Willem Marx, reporting for NPR in March 2025, describe Greenland's prime minister framing an election as a verdict on Trump's "bellicose bullying." In the sense of persistent cruelty, nothing is demanded; making life unpleasant is the point.

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