shoot the bull
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to chat casually and idly
Literally: shoot the bull
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The old men like to meet on the street corner just to shoot the bull.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “shoot the bull” mean?
to chat casually and idly Literally: shoot the bull
Is “shoot the bull” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.