bull

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)An adult male, specifically:
2. (broadly, countable, uncountable)An adult male, specifically:
3. (countable, uncountable)An adult male, specifically:
4. (countable, uncountable)An adult male, specifically:
5. (countable, uncountable)An adult male, specifically:

   “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.”

   “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?"”

6. (slang, uncountable)An adult male, specifically:

   “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.'”

7. (countable, uncountable)A person, compared to the animal.
8. (countable, uncountable)A person, compared to the animal.

   “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 […]”

   “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.”

9. (US, countable, slang, uncountable)A person, compared to the animal.

   “You never waited until the train stopped to get off. The railroad bulls were waiting at the stops searching for freeloaders.”

   “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.”

10. (countable, slang, uncountable)A person, compared to the animal.
11. (countable, uncountable)A person, compared to the animal.

    “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.”

12. (Philadelphia, countable, slang, uncountable)A person, compared to the animal.
13. (UK, countable, historical, obsolete, slang, uncountable)A crown coin; its value, 5 shillings.

    “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.”

14. (UK, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, countable, uncountable)Clipping of bullseye.

    “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.”

15. (UK, countable, uncountable)Clipping of bullseye.
16. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, euphemistic, informal, slang, uncountable)Clipping of bullshit.
17. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A drink made by pouring water into a cask that previously held liquor.
18. A papal bull, an official document or edict from the Pope.
19. A seal affixed to a document, especially a document from the Pope.
20. (uncountable)A lie.
21. (euphemistic, informal, uncountable)Nonsense.
22. (obsolete)A bubble.

adj

1. (not-comparable)Large and strong, like a bull.
2. (attributive, not-comparable)Of large mammals, adult male.

   “a bull elephant”

   “With the low, guttural snarl of the bull ape he sprang for the Frenchman.”

3. (not-comparable)Characterized by rising prices or belief that prices will rise.

   “a bull market”

4. (not-comparable)Stupid.

verb

1. (intransitive, often)To force oneself (in a particular direction); to move aggressively.

   “He bulled his way in.”

2. (intransitive)To be in heat; to be ready for mating with a bull.
3. (transitive)To mate with (a cow or heifer).
4. (transitive)To endeavour to raise the market price of.

   “to bull railroad bonds”

5. (transitive)To endeavour to raise prices in.

   “to bull the market”

6. (dated)To publish in a papal bull.
7. To mock; to cheat.
8. (intransitive)To lie, to tell untruths.
9. (UK, transitive)To polish (boots) to a high shine.

   “We were to repeat our normal practise of me bulling his boots and him ironing my kit.”

name

1. The constellation and zodiacal sign Taurus.

   “The Bull reigneth in the neck, & in the throat.”

   “Those stars said to belong to the Ram might as well be supposed to belong to the Bull or the Lion.”

   “An early Grecian gem shows three nude figures, hand in hand, standing on the head of the Bull, one pointing to seven stars in line over the back, which Landseer referred to the Hyades.”

   “In the Assyrian Standard [...] we see the figure of an Archer above that of a galloping Bull, and in another Assyrian Standard, that of Sargon II., we find not only the Archer and the Bull, the two constellations which 4,000 b.c. marked the equinoctial colure, but we may also clearly trace a reference to the two constellations which at the same date marked the solstitial colure, namely, those of the Lion and the Water-man.”

   “Now, if you went down into the forest where the spring gum-tips gleam gold and ruby in whatever sunshine, Heaven thinks fit to apportion at this season to residents of the Dandenongs (who surely were all born Aquarians) what sign of the Zodiac would you expect to meet? [...] Not Taurus the Bull, who is paddocked, or Cancer the Crab, who lives underground in these regions.”

2. A surname transferred from the nickname derived from the name of the animal.