buller

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbʊlə(ɹ)/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈbʊlɚ/

From Scots buller (“to boil, seethe”). Of obscure origin. Probably related to Old Norse bulla (“to boil”) and Old French bullir (“to boil”), Latin bullio (“I boil”), all from Proto-Indo-European *bew- (“swelling”).

buller (third-person singular simple present bullers, present participle bullering, simple past and past participle bullered)

1. To boil or seethe.
   • 1821, James Hogg, Winter Evening Tales: Collected Among the Cottagers in the South of Scotland:

     The still liquid element startled uprears, It bubbled and bullered and roared in his ears, Like thunder that gallows on high.

   • 1842, Robert Wodrow, Analecta: Or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences Mostly Relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians:

     If this wer a good argument, to prove a man's sins wer not pardoned, because he still finds corruption bullering up in him, then none in the world should have their sin pardoned!

   • 2011, John Craig, The Mint: A History of the London Mint from A.D. 287 to 1948, →ISBN, page 24:

     The end of an assay in the Edinburgh mint was described exactly so in 1639: 'in this haill tyme it was always bullering and as it were seithing bot so soone as it settled and rested from so doeing (al the quhich tyme there did appeir some cleir twinkling sparkles into it)' the assayer 'tooke it forthe bot not in ane instant bot softely by retireing and advancing.

buller (plural bullers)

1. The bubbling or seething of a torrent.

From Scots buller, bullir (“to bellow, roar”), likely of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *bellaną (“to roar”). Compare Danish buldre (“to rumble”), Swedish bullra (“to make a noise, roar, rumble”).

buller (third-person singular simple present bullers, present participle bullering, simple past and past participle bullered)

1. To make a lot of noise.
   • 1818, Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian:

     "Sae we let go the rape,” said David, “ and he went adown the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Bashan, as he's ca'd in Scripture.”

   • 1828, John Spalding, The History of the Troubles and Memorable Transactions in Scotland and England:

     It never shrinked nor feared, but would dowk under the water, snorting and bullering, terrible to the hearers and beholders.

   • 1895, Robert Louis Stevenson, David Balfour, page 331:

     On the other side there lay a lighted suburb, which we thridded for a while, then turned into a dark lane, and presently found ourselves wading in the night among deep sand where we could hear a bullering of the sea.

2. To force one's way; to be pushy.
   • 1989, Fred Urquhart, Graeme Roberts, Full Score: Short Stories, page 69:

     It was not that he bullered and swore like so many of his farmer neighbours. Their men knew what to expect from them, and they swore back, knowing that the next day they could speak to them as if nothing had happened. But Will Murray was different. His word was law.

   • 1996, Colophon Press, Madam X. - Issue 1, page 23:

     The door of the vet's banged open and the receptionist bullered out.

   • 2005, John Aberdein, Amande's Bed, →ISBN, page 8:

     But it's Christmas the morn's morn — It bullered, throbbed like a U-boat, black.

From bull +‎ -er.

buller (plural bullers)

1. A steer that allows itself to be mounted by bulls when in the crowded conditions of a feedlot.
   • 1997, Jack L. Albright, Clive Wendell Arave, The Behaviour of Cattle, page 253:

     Male cattle ('riders') in intensive housing are prone to mount herdmates willing to stand to be mounted ('bullers'). The buller-steer syndrome has been estimated to cost $70 per head, which can represent significant losses in large feedlots (Blackshaw et al., 1997). Incidence of bullers in a feedlot was about 2% (409 bullers in 20,428 mixed breed steers, Irwin et al., 1979).

   • 2008, G. John Benson, Bernard E. Rollin, The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions, →ISBN, page 200:

     The annual incidence of buller steers within the feedlot industry is reported to fall between 2 and 4 percent, but the incidence per pen can be quite variable ranging from 0.0 percent to 11.2 percent per pen (Taylor et al., 1997).

   • 2008, Edward O. Price, Principles and Applications of Domestic Animal Behavior, →ISBN:

     Buller steers are often injured from persistent mounting by pen mates, or debilitated to the point that they must be removed from the group and housed separately. The added labor and pens required to manage buller steers cuts into profit margins. Losses are even greater when buller steers become debilitated.

2. (Caribbean, Jamaica, derogatory) A homosexual man.
   • 2004, Rhoda Reddock, Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities, →ISBN:

     My mother always mentioned these teachings when she saw a buller man or heard about someone thought to be a buller.

   • 2004, Wesley Eddison Aylesworth Crichlow, Buller Men and Batty Bwoys: Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Communities, →ISBN:

     This process of articulating my own story and asking other bullers to make public their stories is an attempt to assert and broaden the reality of Black male same-sex existence, which too many people for far too long have tried to erase.

   • 2012, G. Modele Dale Clarke, Up in Mahaica: Stories From the Market People, →ISBN:

     “Well, day say yuh must be ah buller man,” the pastor said flatly.

• rubell

From bulle +‎ -er.

• IPA^(key): /by.le/

• Audio:

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buller

1. (intransitive) to bubble

• “buller”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

buller

1. first-person singular present passive subjunctive of bullō

From Old Swedish bulder. Arguably from Old Norse, from or related to Proto-Germanic *bellaną (“to roar”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-.

Deverbal from bullra.

• Audio:

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buller n

1. unpleasant noise (usually associated with mechanical sources such as engines and machinery rather than electric/electromechanical sources)
2. a loud rumble, as from thunder

   Synonym: muller

• med buller och bång

• brus
• dån
• huller om buller

• Pokorny, Julius (1959) “372”, in Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (in German), volume 2, Bern, München: Francke Verlag, page 372
• buller in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• buller in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• buller in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)
• bullra in Elof Hellquist, Svensk etymologisk ordbok (1st ed., 1922)