bull session

bull session

Any informal, spontaneous, and lengthy conversation or discussion among a group of people, especially men. Primarily heard in US, South Africa. My co-workers and I like to have bull sessions in the restaurant after we close for the night.
See also: bull, session
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

bull session

An informal discussion, as in College students love late-night bull sessions about anything and everything, from professors to poetry to politics . This expression originally referred to an exchange of opinions and anecdotes, including stories of sexual prowess, by men, and then came to be used more broadly. [Slang; c. 1915]
See also: bull, session
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.

bull session

n. a session of casual conversation. The gals were sitting around enjoying a bull session.
See also: bull, session
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

bull session

An informal discussion. A bull session was originally a late-night college men's dormitory conversation with a wide range of topics—politics, sex, sports, sex, religion, sex . . . The word “bull,” which meant something boastful or outlandish, came from—no surprise here—“bullshit.”
See also: bull, session
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • know where (all) the bodies are buried
  • know where all the bodies are buried
  • know where the bodies are buried
  • verbal diarrhea
  • don't get (one) started
  • don't get me started
  • how-d'ye-do
  • flow
  • nummers
  • sweat
References in periodicals archive
I was around 9 or 10 years old when I got invited to a bull session. The girls placed me in the center of a circle.
And during a bull session with the national team Sunday, she expressed intention to play as soon as possible.
His late arrival for yesterday's bull session didn't help.
Words that cause confusion include gormless, ghostwriter, brutalize, billabong, immolate, papoose, Wicca, and bull session. Glatzer's style is breezy ("In case you missed the movie Dead Poets Society, carpe diem is Latin for seize the day.
The difference between PRI and NPR is kind of like the difference between a bull session with particularly astute friends and a lecture by a knowledgeable but vaguely condescending college professor.
Everywhere we looked there was the little man--in the front row at every lecture and in the middle of every bull session, social hour, and lobby gathering, talking to John Wooden, Dean Smith, and all our other star clinicians.
At one point, as soon as it's clear that nothing very big is going to happen in the standoff, the hostage taker and his charges settle in for a bull session about the ills of the contemporary health care system that seems like something you might catch on C-SPAN on a Saturday afternoon.
Luce, who dismissed food as "just fuel," sped through the meal, then guided us into a bull session. The complex nuances of a question bored him.
Every one of the team shared her thoughts in bull session - including team seniors Rachel Anne Daquis, Aby Marano, Jovelyn Gonzaga - that lasted for one and half hour.
Jesse Ethan Hawke Celine Julie Delpy Book Store Manager Vernon Dobtcheff Journalist #1 Louise Lemoine Torres Journalist #2 Rodolphe Pauly Waitress Marianne Plasteig Philippe Diablo Man at Grill Albert Delpy Woman in Courtyard Marie Pillet If Richard Linklater's engaging 1995 love story "Before Sunrise," which followed strangers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) on an all-night bull session through Vienna, could be seen as a date movie full of promise for lives yet to be lived, then the savvy sequel, "Before Sunset," which reunites the pair briefly in Paris nine years later, is a deeper, darker relationship reality check that nevertheless retains fundamental optimism.
I was on hand for the release of "In Good Faith: A Dialogue on Government Funding of Faith Based Social Services," a 16-page report that stems from a three-year bull session on the role of religion in public life.
Nasty rumors have also been circulating about the fate of members of the coaching staff because of a 2-4 record and a four-game losing streak which forced officials to call for a crucial bull session last week to try to iron things out.
"Moviemaker Master Class" is best recommended to Young Turks in film schools who like picking the brains of the experts--while getting into a lively bull session, however one-sided.
Representatives of a newly formed woman's group are almost comically frustrated in their efforts to get meeting space in an official building An extended debate on women's rights segues to a male-only pub bull session. Over time, thesps begin breaking character to discuss their reactions to the film thus far, and, if this is pic's most challenging passage, it's also a riveting way for Watkins to employ his careerlong strategy of tying the past to the present.
During an "off-the-record" bull session with reporters later that day, White House press secretary Mike McCurry topped Clinton's gag with one of his own: "Probably she does look good compared to the mummy he's been [having sex with]."