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chainsaw

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈt͡ʃeɪnˌsɔː//
  • United States//ˈt͡ʃeɪnˌsɔ//
  • //ˈt͡ʃeɪnˌsɑ//

A power saw that has a power-driven and fast-revolving chain of metal teeth, usually used to cut trees.

noun

  1. 1

    A power saw that has a power-driven and fast-revolving chain of metal teeth, usually used to cut trees.

    He used a chainsaw to cut through the fallen tree on the roadway.

Etymology

Compound of chain + saw in reference to the chain-cutting mechanism.

verb

  1. 1

    To cut with a chainsaw.

    She and Barber once stopped a developer from chainsawing mature trees on Mississauga Rd. by standing in front of them.

  2. 2

    figurativeTo make quick and substantial spending cuts.

Forms

plural
chainsaws
past tense
chainsawed
past participle
chainsawed, chainsawn
present participle
chainsawing
third person singular
chainsaws
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).