The Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

says (s.v. bull, n.⁴): "No foundation appears for ... the assertion of the ‘British Apollo’ (No. 22. 1708) that ‘it became a Proverb from the repeated Blunders of one Obadiah Bull, a Lawyer of London, who liv'd in the Reign of K. Henry the Seventh’.)" Equally, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography contains no Obadiah Bull.

(OED gives the etymology "[Of unknown origin; cf. O[ld] F[rench] boul, boule, bole fraud, deceit, trickery; mod[ern] Icel[andic] bull ‘nonsense’; also M[iddle] E[nglish] bull BUL ‘falsehood’, and BULL v.3, to befool, mock, cheat.")

[Obadiah Bull is said to have been an Irish lawyer who lived and practised in London during the reign of Henry VII

Henry VII of England

Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor....

. His last name is supposed to have been the origin of the term "That's a Bull", for nonsense or a blunder made by an Irishman. He was known to make absurd, half-nonsensical statements that contradicted themselves. A type of Irish joke, an "Irish bull

Irish bull

An Irish bull is a ludicrous, incongruent or logically absurd statement, generally unrecognized as such by its author.The addition of the epithet Irish is a late addition....

" is styled after these.

The term first occurs in a periodical, The British Apollo, in 1740.]