Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to bully, to pressurize, to taunt, to scold; to cheat out of by intimidation; thus bullyrag(ging) n. and adj; bullyragger, n.; also attrib (see cite 1915).

1758		N. Ames A Year of a College Student’s Life in Dedham Hist. Register (1890) I:1 10-16: October 9 some examined about Bulraging Morris.
1823		‘Jon Bee’ A Dict. of the Turf, The Ring, The Chase, etc. 145: To bala-rag [...] (vulgo, bully-rag) is to use such balatronic words and phrases as render this book necessary. ‘Jack Carter [...] let loose his bully-rag at Oliver.’.
1824		Stamford Mercury 20 Aug. 2/4: Her colleagues [...] bullyragg’d her ‘within an inch of her life’, spat in her face, and called her everything their tongues could lay hand to.
1828		R.M. Bird City Looking Glass V iii: There’s no use in bullywragging any more.
1830		I. Pocock Omnibus I i: pat.: AIways bullywraggin’ his servants. led.: I bullyrag my servants, fellow!
1832		Brighton Guardian 3 Oct. 4/1: I bull-ragged the lady, and slanged her in showers.
1838		Berwick Advertiser 24 Feb. 2/2: Coaxing will do more in half an hour, than bullyragging (a vulgar but expressive Irish idiom) in a fortnight.
1845		C. Mathews Writings i. 163: You have been in the habit of bullyragging those that are in arrears.
1846		Morn. Advertiser (London) 24 Aug. 2/5: [They] vent against each other — the one, ‘all the venom of the worms of the Nile’, the other, the polished ‘bullyragging of Billingsgate’.
1849		Bell’s Life in Sydney 20 Jan. 3/2: She followed him through th streets, brickbatting and bullyragging him.
1850		J.C. Neal Pic-nic Sketches 50: I knew it was my fate some time or other to be bully-ragged in the legal way.
1863		Sherborne Mercury (Dorset) 6 Oct. 2/6: Mr Bull to His American Bullies [...] Leave me alone; don’t bother, Bullyrag and worry me!
1875		M. Thompson Hoosier Mosaics 181: The country flared into flames of triumph. Blodgett’s friends stormed the village and ‘bully-ragged’ everybody who had stood out for the editor.
1879		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 5: ‘Begorra, he’ll do yet; the bullyraggin has done him good’.
1882		Bristol Magpie 21 Sept. 3/2: ‘[N]or I ain’t at Lawford’s Gate [i.e. the house of correction] in the box, a bein’ six-and-eightpenny bully-ragged! ’.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Nov. 2/3: The lawyer Fullerton, the braggart bully-ragger of Beecher, gets a clean knock-out In court from the Police Gazette.
1883		Sweet & Knox On a Mexican Mustang, Through Texas 244: These merchants here got into the habit of bullyragging me for not denouncing Wes’ Hardin.
1894		G. du Maurier Trilby 163: Madame Vinard [...] openly prompted, rebuked, and bullyragged her husband into a proper smartness.
1895		Truth (Sydney) 2 June 3/4: Any man or woman giving evidence [...] against either Mary Dean or her irreproachable mother, is bully-ragged and frightened off the scent.
1898		J.D. Brayshaw Slum Silhouettes 15: I’ll lave ye, Biddy. I’ll lave ye. I’ve put up wid yer bullyragging long enough.
1901		Marvel XV:373 Jan. 7: A blusterin’, bullyragging bluffer.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 Mar. 1/1: A sou’-west school inspector learnt his manners in a mia-mia [and] bullyragging sensitive teachers before the assembled scholars is one of his gentle ‘gambols’.
c.1905		J. Furphy Rigby’s Romance (1921) Ch. xiv: 🌐 Clever, edicated gurls doesn’t believe in a (adj.) walk-over. They want a bit o’ bullyraggin’.
1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 275: Don’t try to bullyrag me or I’ll drop you where you stand, gun or no gun.
1915		Day Book (Chicago) 18 Nov. 1/1: The judge [...] threw the case out of court as one of the coarsest jobs of police officialism and rough bullyrag work ever seen.
1918		Hall & Niles One Man’s War (1929) 338: I get bull-ragged by two kinds of higher-ups, and I must say that I like the American bull-ragging least of all.
1927		(con. 1900s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 27: Ought to be ashamed of yourselves, bullyragging a Reverend!
1930		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. (Devon) 20 May 4/5: He recollected the case of a man with a large income [...] who used to bullyrag his creditors.
1941		Western Times 9 May 3/4: [headline] Birching for Boys who ‘Bullyragged’ Old Men.
1947		Aberdeen Jrnl 22 Oct. 6/6: Reference to ‘bullyragging’ of soldiers by sergeant-majors and officers before attending church service was made by the Rev. W.C.B. Smith.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 90: Denninger looked and acted like the kind of man who would [...] bullyrag them around.
2001		S. King Dreamcatcher 468: The four of them had put the fear of God into Ritchie Grenadeau and his bullyrag buddies.