bull session
English
Etymology
bull(shit) + session
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun
bull session (plural bull sessions)
- (idiomatic) An informal discursive group discussion, often one where politics, economics or current events are discussed.
- 1951, J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Little, Brown and Company, OCLC 287628, page 217:
- For instance, if you were having a bull session in somebody’s room, and somebody wanted to come in, nobody’d let them in if they were some dopey, pimply guy.
- 2002, Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom, →ISBN:
- "We had the usual bull sessions about solving the world's problems or what would be the result of something," recalls Breidbart.
- 2008 February 15, Megan McArdle, “Piracy: a symphony of spontaneous order”, in The Atlantic:
- There's an old joke that I used to hear occasionally on British television shows: "It's not theft—it's socialism!" I couldn't help but think of it repeatedly as I read this paper on self-organizing institutional arrangements among pirates, which bears some disturbing similarities to an hours-long anarcho-capitalist bull session.
- 2018 November 30, Elizabeth Lopatto, “Why so many people think Elon Musk is a hero — or a villain”, in The Verge:
- NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine ordered reviews of SpaceX and Boeing. Apparently this was planned before the whiskey-and-weed bull session on The Joe Rogan Experience.
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References
- “bull session”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
- Jonathon Green (2023), “bull session n.”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang