Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A gross blunder in logical speech or expression.
  • noun An adult male bovine mammal.
  • noun The uncastrated adult male of domestic cattle.
  • noun The adult male of certain other large animals, such as alligators, elephants, moose, or whales.
  • noun An exceptionally large, strong, and aggressive person.
  • noun An optimist, especially regarding business conditions.
  • noun A person who buys commodities or securities in anticipation of a rise in prices or who tries by speculative purchases to effect such a rise.
  • noun Slang A police officer or detective.
  • noun Foolish, deceitful, or boastful language.
  • noun Insolent talk or behavior.
  • intransitive verb To push; force.
  • intransitive verb To push ahead or through forcefully.
  • adjective Male.
  • adjective Large and strong like a bull.
  • adjective Characterized by rising prices.
  • idiom (grab/take) To deal with a problem directly and resolutely.
  • noun An official document issued by the pope and sealed with a bulla.
  • noun The bulla used to seal such a document.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A gross inconsistency in language; a ludicrous blunder involving a contradiction in terms: commonly regarded as especially characteristic of the Irish, and often called an Irish bull.
  • noun Synonyms Error, Mistake, etc. See blunder.
  • noun The male of the domestic bovine, of which the female is a cow; in general, the male of any bovine, as of the different species of the genus Bos.
  • noun An old male whale, sea-lion, sea-bear, or fur-seal.
  • noun [capitalized] Taurus, one of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
  • noun In stock-exchange slang, one who endeavors to effect a rise in the price of stock: the opposite of a bear. See bear, 5.
  • noun The bull's-eye of a target.
  • noun plural The stems of hedge-thorns.
  • noun plural The transverse bars of wood into which the heads of harrows are set.
  • noun A five-shilling piece.
  • noun A small keg.
  • noun The weak grog made by pouring water into a spirit-cask nearly empty.
  • noun Same as bulla, 2.
  • noun The most authoritative official document issued by the pope or in his name: usually an open letter containing some decree, order, or decision relating to matters of grace or justice.
  • noun An official letter; an edict; especially, an imperial edict under the Roman or the old German empire.
  • noun A bubble.
  • noun In mining, an iron rod used in ramming clay to line a shot-hole.
  • noun Same as beal.
  • To toss or throw up (hedges), as cattle do.
  • In the stock exchange, to endeavor to raise, as the price of shares, artificially and unduly. See the noun.
  • In the stock exchange, in the interest of or favorable to the bulls; buoyant; rising: as, a bull movement; a bull market.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) The male of any species of cattle (Bovidæ); hence, the male of any large quadruped, as the elephant; also, the male of the whale.
  • noun One who, or that which, resembles a bull in character or action.
  • noun Taurus, the second of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
  • noun A constellation of the zodiac between Aries and Gemini. It contains the Pleiades.
  • noun (Stock Exchange) One who operates in expectation of a rise in the price of stocks, or in order to effect such a rise. See 4th Bear, n., 5.
  • noun vulgar a ludicrously false statement; nonsense. Also used as an expletive.
  • noun the practice of baiting bulls, or rendering them furious, as by setting dogs to attack them.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bule, from Old English bula, probably from Old Norse boli; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bulle, from Old French, from Medieval Latin bulla; see bulla.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French boule ("ball"), from Latin bulla ("round swelling"), from Proto-Indo-European *bhel (“to blow, to swell”).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bull ("falsehood"), of unknown origin. Possibly related to Old French boul, boule, fraud, deceit, trickery. Popularly associated with bullshit.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bulle, from Old French bulle, from Low Latin bulla

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bul, bule, from Old English bula ("bull, steer"), from Proto-Germanic *bulô ("bull"; compare West Frisian bolle, Dutch bul, German Bulle, Old Norse boli), from Proto-Indo-European *bhl̥no (compare Old Irish ball ("limb"), Latin follis ("bellows, leather bag"), Thracian βόλινθος (bólinthos, "wild bull"), Albanian "buall" (bull) or related bolle ("testicles"), Ancient Greek φαλλός (phallós, "penis")), from Proto-Indo-European *bhel (“to blow”). More at blow.

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Examples

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  • Edict v. nonsense.

    May 24, 2008