To overbear with words. A bully is a blustering menacer. (Anglo-Saxon, bulgian, to bellow like a bull.)
It is often used, without any mixture of reproof, as a term of endearment, as:—
“O sweet bully Bottom.”—Midsummer Night’s Dream, iv. 4.
“Bless thee, bully doctor.”—Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 3.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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