bullroarer
noun
bullroarer is a noun meaning “A ritual musical instrument and means of communicating over extended distances, consisting of a slat of wood tied to the end of a thong or string…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-U-L-L-R-O-A-R-E-R, and it appears about once in every 83 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of bullroarer is bullroarers.
What does bullroarer mean?
noun
- 1
A ritual musical instrument and means of communicating over extended distances, consisting of a slat of wood tied to the end of a thong or string, with which the slat is whirled so as to cause an intermittent roaring noise.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce bullroarer?
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-bullroarer.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of bullroarer
- bullroarers plural
- bull roarer
- bull-roarer
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is bullroarer?
Bullroarer appears about once in every 83 million words in written English, the 290,185th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Bullroarer in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense musical instrument:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | rhombe |
| German | Schwirrholz, Schwirrgerät |
| Portuguese | rombo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does bullroarer come from?
From bull + roarer.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).