Word.ws English Dictionary

shoot the bull

shoot the bull verb: to chinwag; to talk idly.

Verb

shoot the bull (third-person singular simple present shoots the bull, present participle shooting the bull, simple past and past participle shot the bull)

  1. (idiomatic) To chinwag; to talk idly.
    • I didn't get what this group therapy was all about, it seemed to me it was just a bunch of people shooting the bull.1976-1977, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
    • Shooting the bull with Benny and Elvira while Nelson skitters around out there in the lake of rooftops, selling used cars like hotcakes.1990, John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

Synonyms of shoot the bull

Forms of shoot the bull

third-person singular presentshoots the bull
present participleshooting the bull
past participleshot the bull
pastshot the bull

Questions about shoot the bull

What does shoot the bull mean?
Shoot the bull means to chinwag; to talk idly.
What part of speech is shoot the bull?
Shoot the bull is a verb.
What is the past tense of shoot the bull?
The past tense of shoot the bull is shot the bull.

Words near shoot the bull in the dictionary

  1. shoot out
  2. shoot outs
  3. shoot someone straight
  4. shoot the boots
  5. shoot the breeze
  6. shoot the bull
  7. shoot the cat
  8. shoot the five
  9. shoot the gold
  10. shoot the lens
  11. shoot the lights out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoot the bull (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shoot the bull.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shoot the bull.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shoot_the_bull. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.