Word.ws English Dictionary

steam roller

steam roller is the alternative form of steamroller.

Meaning of steamroller

Noun

steamroller (plural steamrollers)

  1. (historical) A steam-powered heavy road roller.
  2. (broadly, informal) Any heavy road roller.
  3. (figuratively) Any seemingly irresistible force.
    • Well, I'm a steamroller, babe / I'm bound to roll all over you1970, James Taylor, “Steamroller Blues”
  4. (slang) A pipe, used for smoking cannabis, open at both ends and having a bowl near one end.
    • It's more about him testing his wares. He rolls joints. He doesn't own a bong, hookah, smoking pipe, chillum, vaporizer, scale, dugout system, grinder, or steamroller.2005, Jane Smiley, John Kulka, Natalie Danford, editors, Best New American Voices 2006, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 242

See all 6 meanings of steamroller

Forms of steam roller

pluralsteam rollers

Questions about steam roller

What is steam roller the alternative form of?
Steam roller is the alternative form of steamroller.

Words near steam roller in the dictionary

  1. Steam Plains
  2. steam power
  3. steam punk
  4. steam radio
  5. steam reforming
  6. steam roller
  7. steam rollers
  8. steam room
  9. steam rooms
  10. steam ship
  11. steam ships

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: steam roller (page history and authors); steamroller (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “steam roller.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/steam_roller. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.