A heavy locomotive engine with wide wheels used for crushing road-metal and levelling roads.
1863. Daily Bee (Sacramento), 29 Aug., 1/1. A French inventor has designed a steam-roller to consolidate gravel and macadamized roads.
1866. Engineering, 18 May, 318/3. The Ballaison steam roller … may now be seen at all hours of the day crushing smooth the granite of the new boulevards of Paris.
1877. Philipson, in Q. Rev., CXLIV. 424. There, too, six-horse rollers are found to do the work of setting a roadway far more effectually than our steam-rollers.
b. fig. (colloq.) A crushing power or force. Also attrib.
1902. Munsey’s Mag., XXVI. 489/1. She [Russia] sought to achieve her end by means of the ‘steam roller’ of the concert of Europe.
1902. Blackw. Mag., Dec., 731/1. At last Kitchener … set his steam-roller in motion and rolled the enemy flat.
1906. Westm. Gaz., 16 June, 15/1. In the Caucasus, as in Finland, she [sc. Russia] has adopted the steam-roller policy, and by crushing national aspirations has estranged possible loyalists.
Hence Steam-roll v. trans., to crush or level with a steam-roller; Steam-rolling vbl. sb.
1879. T. Codrington, Macadamised Roads, 99. The cost of steam rolling, when there is constant work for the machine, is far less than that of horse rolling.
1900. Daily News, 26 Dec., 6/3. The usual plan … is to finish off the laid road metal with gravel, which is well watered and steam rolled.
