What does bulldoze mean?
Word: Bulldoze
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: Bulldoze means to knock down or flatten buildings, trees or earth with a bulldozer; also to force a plan or person to go along with something without listening to objections.
Synonyms: demolish, flatten, raze, force
Antonyms: build, construct, erect
Word origin: First recorded in the United States in the 1870s as slang for pushing people around; the sense of flattening ground with a machine came in the 1930s.
How do you spell bulldoze?
Syllables: bull - doze
Tricky part: The trap is near the end: the buzzing z sound is spelt with a real z, and students who think of the word dose often write an s there instead.
Watch out for: bulldose, bulldoz, bulldoaze
Memory tip: Picture the big machine snoring zzz as it pushes the earth along: that buzzing sound is spelt with a z, never an s.
Bulldoze in a sentence
Example 1: The workers will bulldoze the old godown to make room for a metro station.
Example 2: Don't let the loudest person bulldoze the group into a plan nobody likes.
Example 3: After the landslide, a machine was brought in to bulldoze the mud off the highway.
Fun Fact
Early bulldozers were made by fixing a heavy steel blade to the front of a crawler tractor, a tractor that runs on tracks instead of wheels.
Practise the CREST Way
Spellacadabra
Choose the misspelt word:
a) buldoze
b) bulletin
c) bullion
d) bulwark
Show answer
a) buldoze. Bulwark really does manage with one l, but the flattening verb keeps two, like bullion and bulletin.
Word Champ
Choose the correct word for the blank:
When a minister pushes a new rule past every protest, people say she tried to ___ it through.
a) belittle
b) bamboozle
c) befuddle
d) bulldoze
Show answer
d) bulldoze. Bamboozle means to trick and befuddle means to confuse; pushing something through by force is to bulldoze it.
Word Tally
How many words are misspelt in the given sentence?
The council plans to bulldoze the crumbeling cinema hall, even though hundreds of residents signed a petision to save it.
a) 1
b) 0
c) 2
d) 3
Show answer
c) 2. Bulldoze is fine here; crumbling loses the e it has in crumble, and petition ends in -tion.
Jumble Tumble
What is the meaning of the word that can be formed from the given letters?
zelbdolu
a) to trick someone with clever, slippery talk
b) to clear a site by pushing everything over with a bladed tractor
c) to leave someone muddled and unsure what is going on
d) to make someone feel small and of little worth
Show answer
b) to clear a site by pushing everything over with a bladed tractor. All eight letters rebuild the machine verb; the other meanings belong to bamboozle, belittle and befuddle.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. A bulldozer is mainly used to ___.
a) spray paint on long walls
b) pump water out of a well
c) lift loads to the top floor
d) push earth and rubble aside
Show answer
d) push earth and rubble aside
2. In which sentence does bulldoze mean to flatten with a machine?
a) He tried to bulldoze us into saying yes.
b) The crew will bulldoze the old wall on Monday.
c) Don't let her bulldoze the whole meeting.
d) They bulldozed the plan through the council.
Show answer
b) The crew will bulldoze the old wall on Monday.
