DICT.TW Dictionary Taiwan

 Bull, n.
 1. A seal. See Bulla.
 2. A letter, edict, or respect, of the pope, written in Gothic characters on rough parchment, sealed with a bulla, and dated “a die Incarnationis,” i. e., “from the day of the Incarnation.”  See Apostolical brief, under Brief.
    A fresh bull of Leo's had declared how inflexible the court of Rome was in the point of abuses.   --Atterbury.
 3. A grotesque blunder in language; an apparent congruity, but real incongruity, of ideas, contained in a form of expression; so called, perhaps, from the apparent incongruity between the dictatorial nature of the pope's bulls and his professions of humility.
    And whereas the papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholic, it is a mere contradiction, one of the pope's bulls, as if he should say universal particular; a Catholic schimatic.   --Milton.
 The Golden Bull, an edict or imperial constitution made by the emperor Charles IV. (1356), containing what became the fundamental law of the German empire; -- so called from its golden seal.
 Syn: -- See Blunder.
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