"These last several years saw the strongest bull market in decades," you might have heard some talking head say at some point. "We've been on a bear market run for months now," or maybe, "The bear is looking to bull — watch the horns. Also, there's a porcupine eating a dead canary in the mineshafts of graphs that go up, up, and zing, dolla' dolla' bills ya'll." Yeah, financial lingo isn't the clearest, sometimes. We're sure plenty of people have zero clue what a "bear market" and "bull market" even are, let alone where the terms came from. No fault on them, either. They're probably too busy buying groceries to mess around with our international gambling cartel, i.e., the stock market. And bear and bull markets? The origins of the terms are even more unclear than whatever wizardry happens on the stock market floor. But we can at least clear up the meanings of the terms. A "bull market" is when stock prices are generally going up. Interested parties want to buy shares during this period — as early as possible, too — in the hopes of selling them when prices get even higher. A "bear market" is when stock prices are generally going down. Betting types want to sell their assets during this period — also as early as possible — in the hopes of makin' 'dem sweet, sweet greens. And just like how no one knows the stock market's future, no one knows 100% where the terms "bull market" and "bear market" came from. They could be related to how each animal attacks, old bearskin-trading practices, or even a poem by Alexander Pope.   Let's do a little quiz, shall we? A 2,000-pound bull rushes you with its horns pointed forward. Do you, a) Dodge and live another day, or b) Die impaled on the bull's horns with your viscera spilling out? Now, a strong, 800-pound grizzly rushes you with its toothy maw gnashing. Do you, a) Do this mega-sweet uppercut and KO that mofo like 6% of Americans think they could, or b) Die shredded and mauled on a forest floor with no one to mourn you?  If you chose "b" in both cases, you'd be correct. That's because bulls and bears are big and dangerous. And critically to our whole stock market thing, they attack in different ways. The bull swings its horns up, and the bear swipes its paws down. Hence the bull market (rising prices) and bear market (falling prices) analogy. At least, that's one story of the terms' origins, sometimes called the "gory disembowelment theory." This hypothesis also connects to actual bull vs. bear fights that circulated in England from the 12th to 16th centuries, where spectators bet on which would win. But even though the visual imagery makes sense — as does the betting on bulls vs. bears — there's little in the way of hard evidence pointing to this connection being the original cause for the terms "bull" and "bear market." Regardless, bull (upward horn) and bear (downward paw) attack methods provide a useful tool to remember what bull and bear markets are. You know the phrase, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch"? The second possible origin of the terms "bull market" and "bear market" connects to a similar idea: "Don't sell the bear's skin before one has caught the bear" (to paraphrase Merriam-Webster). Both statements make literal and figurative sense, and both caution against assuming a certain outcome before something has happened. If this sounds connected to stock market speculation, then you're on the right track. With this in mind, we look to 18th-century Britain, when bearskin trading was a big thing. Back in this heydey of fur peddling, bearskin merchants would buy fur from trappers or craftspeople and sell them to customers. But sometimes, they promised prices based on hunts that were still in progress, without knowing a final outcome. As a result, they could manipulate prices or "short" the bear trade in the same way that folks today can short the stock market (like what happened in 2015's excellent "The Big Short," which chronicled the 2007 to 2008 subprime loan crisis). Dishonest merchants of this type got nicknamed "bearskin jobber," where jobber meant wholesaler. This got abbreviated to "bearskin," which got abbreviated to "bear." In 1709, Irish writer Richard Steele first defined the above terminology in print. As Merrian-Webster quotes, "I take the meaning to be, that one who ensures a real value upon an imaginary thing, is said to sell a 'bear.'" After Britain's monstrously disastrous South Sea Bubble financial crash of 1720, the term "bear" came into wider use. Fast-forward to the present and we've got "bear market," so the theory goes. And now we come to something you never expected to learn about in this article: poetry. And quality poetry, too, from 18th-century master Alexander Pope, who lived from 1688 to 1744. Note the time frame. His life overlapped not only with Britain's top bearskin-selling days but also the 1720 South Sea Bubble financial crash we briefly mentioned. The South Sea Bubble connects to Pope directly and also to the origin of the term "bull market."  In 1711, the British government founded the South Sea Company to wrangle various trading ventures with the Americas and reduce national debt. In anticipation of dramatic trade increase following the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 to 1714), the South Sea Company sold stocks at a huge 6% interest rate. People overbought the stock, and prices rose to £1,000 pounds per share — an absolutely unbelievable £175,404 modernly. In August 1720, just before the whole thing crashed, Alexander Pope wrote to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu recommending that she buy the stock, swearing that he'd heard the prices would continue to rise. They didn't, and Pope and Montagu's relationship fell apart.  Before this happened, a hopeful Pope had penned the poem "An Inscription upon a Punch-Bowl": "Come, fill the South Sea goblet full / The gods shall of our stock take care / Europa pleased accepts the Bull / And Jove with joy puts off the Bear." Note the bull contrasted with the bear. But even if this is where "bull market" comes from, it's still not clear how it continued getting used to the present — just like "bear market."