bear hug

1. 1.

   a wrestling hold with arms locked tightly around the opponent

   Broaderwrestling hold
2. 2.

   a takeover bid so attractive that the directors of the target company must approve it or risk shareholder protest

   Broadertakeover attempt

Questions about bear hug

What does bear hug mean?

bear hug means "a wrestling hold with arms locked tightly around the opponent". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is bear hug a common word?

bear hug is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.