HAMMER THOSE BULLS

DOCID: 3928641.UNCLASSIFIED1-lcmuncr Those Bulls!Today, if an operator encounters a text th~t is garbled, she or he will say, among other things, thatit is "hammered." + ·~, :.During the American Civil War, an operatbr would describe the same sort of text as "buJled."The derivation is unclear, but Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Englishdefines "bull" as meaning a ludicrous jest or seif-contradictory statement, an inconsistency unnoticedby its perpetrator and often produci...