英语词汇bull的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

bull! Bull!, in the sense of “a lie, an exaggeration, an incredi- ble concocted story,” was first recorded in 1911 and is not a eu- phemism for the euphemistic “booshwah” (which derives from the French bois de vache, “cow’s wood” or “dried dung”). It has nothing to do with a papal bull either or, for that matter, with Irish bulls (ludicrous incongruities such as “It’s grand to be alone, especially if your swateheart is wid you”). No one can say for sure just how the expression originated. Bull! may have passed into English via the French boule, meaning “fraud.” Or it could come from a “cock and bull story,” an expression that dates back to at least the early 17th century. Another explana- tion is that it’s simply a shortening of bullshit, which was first recorded in 1928, but it was probably around long before that. Still another has it deriving from the American expression “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw [fling] a bull,” dating back to the 1830s. The papal bull comes from the Latin bulla for the heavy leaden seal attached to papal edicts, while the term Irish bull may derive from either the Middle English bull, to cheat, or the Old French boule, fraud.

词汇	bull
词源	bull! Bull!, in the sense of “a lie, an exaggeration, an incredi- ble concocted story,” was first recorded in 1911 and is not a eu- phemism for the euphemistic “booshwah” (which derives from the French bois de vache, “cow’s wood” or “dried dung”). It has nothing to do with a papal bull either or, for that matter, with Irish bulls (ludicrous incongruities such as “It’s grand to be alone, especially if your swateheart is wid you”). No one can say for sure just how the expression originated. Bull! may have passed into English via the French boule, meaning “fraud.” Or it could come from a “cock and bull story,” an expression that dates back to at least the early 17th century. Another explana- tion is that it’s simply a shortening of bullshit, which was first recorded in 1928, but it was probably around long before that. Still another has it deriving from the American expression “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw [fling] a bull,” dating back to the 1830s. The papal bull comes from the Latin bulla for the heavy leaden seal attached to papal edicts, while the term Irish bull may derive from either the Middle English bull, to cheat, or the Old French boule, fraud.
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