bull
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbʊl/
ipa: /bʉl/
rhymes: -ʊl
Forms: form: bulls
Etymology: From Middle English bole, bul, bule, from a conflation of Old English bula (“bull, steer”) and Old Norse boli, both from Proto-Germanic *bulô (“bull”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰl̥no-, from *bʰel- (“to blow, swell up”). Cognate with West Frisian bolle, Dutch bul, German Low German Bull, German Bulle, Swedish bulla; also Old Irish ball (“limb”), Latin follis (“bellows, leather bag”), Albanian bolle (“testicles”), Ancient Greek φαλλός (phallós, “penis”).
Senses: glosses: An adult male of domesticated cattle or oxen.
Specifically, one that is uncastrated.
glosses: An adult male of domesticated cattle or oxen.
Any bovine of an aggressive or long-horned breed regardless of age and sex.
glosses: A male of domesticated cattle or oxen of any age.
glosses: Any adult male bovine.
examples: text: The quick eyes of a female caught sight of him first. With a barking guttural she called the attention of the others. Several huge bulls stood erect to get a better view of the intruder. With bared fangs and bristling necks they advanced slowly toward him, with deep-throated, ominous growls.
ref: 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 196:
text: The upshot of the affair was that she accompanied me next morning. I rowed into the adjoining cove and up to the edge of the beach. There were seals all about us in the water, and the bellowing thousands on the beach compelled us to shout at each other to make ourselves heard.
"I know men club them," I said, trying to reassure myself and gazing doubtfully at a large bull, not thirty feet away, upreared on his fore-flippers and regarding me intently. "But the question is, How do they club them?"
ref: 1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC:
glosses: An adult male of certain large mammals, such as whales, elephants, camels and seals.
glosses: A large, strong man.
examples: text: This accompt has been made to appear a bull accompt, i.e. that the bulls cannot take their stock. The fact is the reverse; it is a bear accompt, but the bears, unable to deliver their stock, have conjointly banged the market, and pocketed the tickets, to defeat the rise and loss that would have ensued to them by their buying on a rising price on the accompt day […]
ref: 1821, Bank of England, The Bank - The Stock Exchange - The Bankers ..., page 64:
text: Bulls are hoping the prosecutions draw a line under the sector's troubled past and will allow it to tap billions of dollars of cash from Wall Street.
ref: 2023 December 9, Scott Chipolina, “Unlikely resurgence for bitcoin as bulls bet on Wall Street adoption”, in FT Weekend, Companies & Markets, page 15:
topics: business
finance
glosses: An investor who buys (commodities or securities) in anticipation of a rise in prices.
examples: text: You never waited until the train stopped to get off. The railroad bulls were waiting at the stops searching for freeloaders.
ref: 2021, Rickie Lee Jones, Last Chance Texaco, Grive Press 2022, p. 93
text: The Bat—they called him the Bat.[…]. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.
ref: 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
glosses: A policeman; a detective; a railroad security guard.
glosses: An elderly lesbian.
examples: text: Half-a-crown is known as an alderman, half a bull, half a tusheroon, and a madza caroon; whilst a crown piece, or five shillings, may be called either a bull, or a caroon, or a cartwheel, or a coachwheel, or a thick-un, or a tusheroon.
ref: 1859, J.C. Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words:
synonyms: bullseye
glosses: A crown coin; its value, 5 shillings.
examples: text: A second good game was to cannon one galloping camel with another, and crash it into a near tree. Either the tree went down (valley trees in the light Hejaz soil were notably unstable things) or the rider was scratched and torn; or, best of all, he was swept quite out of his saddle, and left impaled on a thorny branch, if not dropped violently to the ground. This counted as a bull, and was very popular with everyone but him.
ref: 1926, T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, New York: Anchor, published 1991, page 219:
glosses: Clipping of bullseye.
topics: engineering
firearms
government
military
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
tools
war
weaponry
glosses: Clipping of bullseye.
The central portion of a target, inside the inner and magpie.
glosses: A man or boy (derived from the Philadelphia English pronunciation of “boy”, which is practically a homophone of “bull”)
glosses: Clipping of bullshit.
examples: text: The Vixen, often known as ‘Hotwife’, has sex with the encouragement of her husband or boyfriend with the Bull (that’s the guy who is servicing her). Another scenario is that the Vixen has sex with a Bull outside of the couple’s shared abode. Then she comes home and recounts all the details in a blow-by-blow description to turn the Stag on.
ref: 2018 June 1, Holly O'Mahony, “‘Stag’ men love watching other guys have sex with their wives… but it’s not cuckolding”, in The Sun:
coordinate_terms: cuckold
cuckquean
cuckcake
glosses: A man who has sex with someone else's partner, with the consent of both.
glosses: A drink made by pouring water into a cask that previously held liquor.
examples: text: Meanwhile the Tommies had discovered several large tins of ham in the captured lorry. 'That,' said the big Nazi, 'is for our tea.' 'No,' said a Tommy sergeant-major. 'That's for our tea. For you, chummy, we've kept a nice bit of bull.'
ref: 1949, Stephen Peter Llewellyn, Journey Towards Christmas, page 142:
glosses: Beef.
Synonyms: sense: cattle
word: gentleman cow
word: guy
word: dude
word: bro
word: cat
sense: slang: policeman
word: cop
word: copper
word: pig
word: rozzer. See also Thesaurus:police officer
Coordinate terms: cow
ox
calf
steer