Word.ws English Dictionary

shooting the bull

shooting the bull is the present participle and gerund of shoot the bull.

Meaning of shoot the bull

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

Questions about shooting the bull

What is shooting the bull the present participle and gerund of?
Shooting the bull is the present participle and gerund of shoot the bull.

Words near shooting the bull in the dictionary

  1. shooting sticks
  2. shooting suit
  3. shooting suits
  4. shooting the boots
  5. shooting the breeze
  6. shooting the bull
  7. shooting the cat
  8. shooting the five
  9. shooting the gold
  10. shooting the lens
  11. shooting the lights out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shooting the bull (page history and authors); 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.

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