Other forms: pushed, pushing, pushes
To push is to press something so that it moves away from you. Push the door, push a pram, push somebody out of the way. Its opposite is pull, and the pair is on every door in the world.
From the physical action come the pressure senses: to push somebody is to urge them hard, and to push a product is to promote it aggressively. Both carry a note of too much — a pushy person is unpleasant. The noun is a push, and there is a useful cluster of idioms: at a push means if absolutely necessary, and push comes to shove marks the moment things get serious. Note push off, which in British English is a rude way of saying go away.
1verbpushTo press something so that it moves away from you.
“Push the door, do not pull it.”
2verburgeTo urge somebody hard to do something.
“His parents pushed him into medicine.”
3nounactAn act of pushing.
“It just needs a push to get it started.”
4verbpromoteTo promote something energetically.
“They are pushing the new range in every shop window.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
push is a way of moving something.
Old French poulser came from Latin pulsare, to beat or strike — the same verb behind pulse, impulse and repulse. A push and a heartbeat are the same word underneath: both are a sudden pressure outwards.
Proto-Indo-European
*pel- (beat)
Latin
pulsō
Old French
poulser
Middle French
pousser
Middle English
pushen
English, today
push
From Middle English pushen, from Middle French pousser, from Old French poulser, from Latin pulsō. From Middle English pushen, poshen, posson, borrowed from Middle French pousser (Modern French pousser) from Old French poulser, from Latin pulsare (“to beat, strike”), frequentative of pellere (past participle pulsus). a doublet of pulsate and pulse#Verb. Partly displaced native sċūfan, whence Modern English shove.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA