chivvy

verb

1. (British, transitive)To coerce or hurry along, as by persistent request.

   “Odd's wouns! it was a proper hunt. Away went my gentlemen, whooping like madmen, with their coat skirts flapping in the breeze, chivying on the dogs and having a rare morning's sport.”

   “Some customers could now be relied upon to send in their orders regularly and, apart from having to chivy those who had fallen behind with their payments, this allowed travellers to concentrate their energies on securing new customers and on recovering those who had been lost to competitors.”

   “He headed for home, walking a little faster now, as if chivied along by some old cold wind that didn't quite reach the sunlit world.”

   “[H]e would chivvy us into position, prodding us gently but forcefully with his stick.”

   “For 11 years now he [Tony Blair] has only one approach – to lead from the front and then to confront, challenge, and chivvy the Labour Party into backing him.”

2. (British, transitive)To subject to harassment or verbal abuse.

   “He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Sangsby she was allus a chivying on me—like everybody everywheres.”

   “So when I was done, and the fishing was as good as the start, I cut a long "staddle," with a bush at the top, and I just went for that school of trout. I chevied, harried and scattered them, up stream and down, until I could not see a fish.”

   “"They're chevying that poor animal [a dog] again," he said hotly. "It's scandalous." / "Rupert can take care of himself," said the mate calmly, continuing his meal. "I expect, if the truth's known, it's him 's been doin' the chevying."”

   “Toby played the lightly chivvied ‘husband’ very sweetly, and Sophie claimed him in the childish ways of someone experimenting with her power, with little exasperations and innuendos.”

3. (British, transitive)To sneak up on or rapidly approach.
4. (British, transitive)To pursue as in a hunt.

   “to chivvy the fox”

   “The police were kept out of sight, and the amusements of the mob consisted chiefly in forming bodies which rushed from one end of the Park to the other, to the great injury of other rioters; or in hunting or "chivvying" any footman or remarkable person who should venture among them; some of these unfortunates were much injured.”

   “[…] John, before taking his departure, had left the stable door and the front gate open, and that Tartar [a horse], having no halter on, had quietly walked out into the high road, and had been chevied up and down by the boys for the last quarter of an hour.”

   “[I]t seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket.”

   “With Mr. [Ernest] Hemingway, we at once enter the front line of modern literary warfare. We are face to face with the largest and wildest of the game that Mr. Wyndham Lewis chivvies through the warrens of the Rive Gauche and with the only one of its fauna on whose tail he has tried to place a pinch of commendatory salt, apparently in vain.”

noun

1. (British, transitive)Something that encourages one to act; a goad, a spur.

   “Although Mr [Paul] Hatcher is not sure how popular the site will be he has designed it to handle up to 10,000 requests an hour. "It's just there to act as a chivvy to London Underground," he said.”