bull session

English

Etymology

bull(shit) +‎ session

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

bull session (plural bull sessions)

1. (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, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, 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^[1], →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^[2]:

     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^[3]:

     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.

References

• “bull session”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• Jonathon Green (2024) “bull session n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang