Word.ws English Dictionary

buller

UK/ˈbʊlə(ɹ)/US/ˈbʊlɚ/

buller verb: to boil or seethe.

Verb (1)

buller (third-person singular simple present bullers, present participle bullering, simple past and past participle bullered)

  1. To boil or seethe.
    • The still liquid element startled uprears, It bubbled and bullered and roared in his ears, Like thunder that gallows on high.1821, James Hogg, Winter Evening Tales: Collected Among the Cottagers in the South of Scotland
    • If this wer a good argument, to prove a man's sins wer not pardoned, because he still finds corruption bullering up in him, then none in the world should have their sin pardoned!1842, Robert Wodrow, Analecta: Or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences Mostly Relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians

Noun (1)

buller (plural bullers)

  1. The bubbling or seething of a torrent.

Verb (2)

buller (third-person singular simple present bullers, present participle bullering, simple past and past participle bullered)

  1. To make a lot of noise.
    • "Sae we let go the rape,” said David, “ and he went adown the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Bashan, as he's ca'd in Scripture.”1818, Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian
    • It never shrinked nor feared, but would dowk under the water, snorting and bullering, terrible to the hearers and beholders.1828, John Spalding, The History of the Troubles and Memorable Transactions in Scotland and England
  2. To force one's way; to be pushy.
    • It was not that he bullered and swore like so many of his farmer neighbours. Their men knew what to expect from them, and they swore back, knowing that the next day they could speak to them as if nothing had happened. But Will Murray was different. His word was law.1989, Fred Urquhart, Graeme Roberts, Full Score: Short Stories, page 69
    • The door of the vet's banged open and the receptionist bullered out.1996, Colophon Press, Madam X. - Issue 1, page 23

Noun (2)

buller (plural bullers)

  1. A steer that allows itself to be mounted by bulls when in the crowded conditions of a feedlot.
    • Male cattle ('riders') in intensive housing are prone to mount herdmates willing to stand to be mounted ('bullers'). The buller-steer syndrome has been estimated to cost $70 per head, which can represent significant losses in large feedlots (Blackshaw et al., 1997). Incidence of bullers in a...1997, Jack L. Albright, Clive Wendell Arave, The Behaviour of Cattle, page 253
    • The annual incidence of buller steers within the feedlot industry is reported to fall between 2 and 4 percent, but the incidence per pen can be quite variable ranging from 0.0 percent to 11.2 percent per pen (Taylor et al., 1997).2008, G. John Benson, Bernard E. Rollin, The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions, →ISBN, page 200
  2. (Caribbean, Jamaica, derogatory) A homosexual man.
    • My mother always mentioned these teachings when she saw a buller man or heard about someone thought to be a buller.2004, Rhoda Reddock, Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities, →ISBN
    • This process of articulating my own story and asking other bullers to make public their stories is an attempt to assert and broaden the reality of Black male same-sex existence, which too many people for far too long have tried to erase.2004, Wesley Eddison Aylesworth Crichlow, Buller Men and Batty Bwoys: Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Communities, →ISBN

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Buller

Buller (countable and uncountable, plural Bullers)

  1. A surname from Middle English.
  2. A river and gorge on the West Coast, New Zealand.
  3. A territorial authority of the West Coast, New Zealand; in full, Buller District.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Buller

the Buller

  1. (dated, Oxford University slang) The Bullingdon Club.
    • Writing in Radio Times, Michael Cockerell, the veteran political film-maker, reveals that the documentary includes a scene in which Johnson examines a famous photograph of himself, Cameron and other members of the “Buller” in their blue tailcoats with white silk facings, mustard waistcoats and gold...2013 March 19, Adam Sherwin, “‘Toffishness and twittishness’—Boris Johnson spills beans on Bullingdon Club and reveals childhood ambition to be ‘world king’”, in The Independent

Noun (3) capitalized: Buller

Buller (plural Bullers)

  1. (dated, Oxford University slang) A member of the Bullingdon Club.
    • Osborne is said to have been ragged by fellow Bullers over having attended St Paul's, the top London day school, which is, apparently, not posh enough.2008 May 8, Barney Ronay, “Young, rich and drunk”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

buller meaning in Tamil

buller in Tamil

மதவெருது

Examples of buller in a sentence

  • But it's Christmas the morn's morn — It bullered, throbbed like a U-boat, black.2005, John Aberdein, Amande's Bed, →ISBN, page 8:
  • Male cattle ('riders') in intensive housing are prone to mount herdmates willing to stand to be mounted ('bullers').1997, Jack L. Albright, Clive Wendell Arave, The Behaviour of Cattle, page 253:
  • Buller steers are often injured from persistent mounting by pen mates, or debilitated to the point that they must be removed from the group and housed separately.2008, Edward O. Price, Principles and Applications of Domestic Animal Behavior, →ISBN:
  • “Well, day say yuh must be ah buller man,” the pastor said flatly.2012, G. Modele Dale Clarke, Up in Mahaica: Stories From the Market People, →ISBN:

Forms of buller

Verb
third-person singular presentbullers
present participlebullering
past participlebullered
pastbullered
Noun
pluralbullers
pluralBullers
Proper noun
pluralBullers

Origin of buller

From Scots buller (“to boil, seethe”). Of obscure origin. Probably related to Old Norse bulla (“to boil”) and Old French bullir (“to boil”), Latin bulliō (“to boil”), all from Proto-Indo-European *bew- (“swelling”).

From Scots buller, bullir (“to bellow, roar”), likely of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *bellaną (“to roar”). Compare Danish buldre (“to rumble”), Swedish bullra (“to make a noise, roar, rumble”).

From bull + -er.

Words formed from buller

Questions about buller

What does buller mean?
Buller means to boil or seethe.
What is buller in Tamil?
Buller in Tamil is மதவெருது. See Buller meaning in Tamil.
How do you use buller in a sentence?
But it's Christmas the morn's morn — It bullered, throbbed like a U-boat, black.
What part of speech is buller?
Buller can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce buller?
Buller is pronounced /ˈbʊlə(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the past tense of buller?
The past tense of buller is bullered.

Words near buller in the dictionary

  1. Bulleid
  2. Bullen
  3. bullen-bullen
  4. bullen-nails
  5. Bullengarook
  6. buller
  7. bullered
  8. bullerengue
  9. bullering
  10. bullers
  11. bulles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buller (page history and authors); Buller (page history and authors); buller (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “buller.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buller. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.