bull con
bull con noun: a confidence trick, or deceptive speech by a swindler.
Noun
bull con (plural bull cons)
- A confidence trick, or deceptive speech by a swindler.
- Dem guys has got t’ show me somet’in’ before I’ll stan’ fer dem tales dey tell. I t’ink it’s all de bull con.1896, Frank Hutcheson, “The barkeep discusses hypnotism”, in The Barkeep Stories, Chicago: E.A. Weeks & Company, page 48
- Like most fellows who stay in the West long, Allen was a great bull-con man (hot air man). […] I hadn't been in the West long, and the poorest kind of bull-con dealer found in me an easy mark.1907, John Peele, From North Carolina to Southern California without a Ticket and How I did it, page 109
Forms of bull con
| plural | bull cons |
|---|---|
| alternative form | bull-con |
Origin of bull con
Compound of bull (“lies; insincere talk”) + con (“a confidence trick; fraud”). Attested from the late 19th century.
Questions about bull con
- What does bull con mean?
- Bull con means a confidence trick, or deceptive speech by a swindler.
- What part of speech is bull con?
- Bull con is a noun.
- What is the plural of bull con?
- The plural of bull con is bull cons.
Words near bull con in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bull con (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “bull con.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bull_con. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.