the.com/ramrod

means A rod used to pack the charge down the barrel of a muzzle-loading gun, and figuratively a rigidly strict, unbending person — or, as a verb, to force something through with stubborn determination.

from A plain compound of "ram" (to drive or force) and "rod," born in the age of muzzle-loaders, when you literally rammed powder and ball down the barrel with a long stick. "Ram" itself goes back to Old English, the same word as the butting male sheep — the animal that drives forward headfirst became the verb for anything pushed home by force. From the stiff, straight stick the figurative "ramrod-straight" posture followed, and from there the human ramrod who won't bend; the American sense of a tough foreman or boss who "ramrods" a job through is a 19th-century cattle-country flowering of the same image.