whipsaw

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whipsaw

1. tv. to assault a person; to gang up and beat a person. What kind of creeps would whipsaw an old buzzard like that?
2. tv. [for the stock market] to reduce the capital of investors by frightening them into selling when stock prices are low and encouraging them to buy when prices are high. (Securities markets.) A lot of people were whipsawed in the recent market volatility.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive ?
As the populists whipsaw these so-called greedy corporations, it will be a fair question to ask: who exactly are they whipsawing? As political reporter Stuart Rothenberg has pointed out, we are not simply talking about a few obscenely wealthy CEOs; we are talking about a large number of employees whose livelihood depends on the success of these corporations--1,800,000 at Wal-Mart, 330,000 at IBM, and another 1,200,000 at Citigroup, United Technologies, and General Electric--plus the millions of individual shareholders whose pensions are tied to corporate profitability.
Populism redux
I went through a set of whipsawing emotions recently.
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Fortunately, they too are attuned to the crosscurrents whipsawing the biz.
Wells, Bochco ride tide of change
As the trigger came further back, the finger would find itself applying most of its pressure to the left side of the trigger, whipsawing the muzzle back to the left.
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Anecdotes about whipsawing dot-com fortunes are plentiful.
2001 - The Year of Value
Her concern was to find an arrangement that would keep speakership rivalries from whipsawing House GOP newcomers.
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The executor's position was a classic case of whipsawing the government; the Service would have no recourse if the estate's position was upheld, because the statute of limitations had expired on the husband's estate.
Significant recent developments in estate planning
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