The word I have heard used for that sort of thing is casuistry.Ĭlearly, when we want to dismiss something as claptrap, poppycock, flapdoodle and ráiméis, we are spoilt for choice. For your one doubt he will give you twenty new ones and his talk is always full of “ifs” and “buts”, rawmaish and pseudo-theology. Ye are forever trimming and adjudicating yourselves to the new winds that do blow. Flann O’Brien found use for it in his rambunctious satire The Hard Life: Hogwash in a sentence (word usage in recent Hindu newspaper) Trust me, these ‘get rich quick’ advertisements are pure bull, guff and hogwash’ ‘As you can see, all this advice being offered by these so-called ‘online experts’ is nothing but hogwash and claptrap.’ ‘This is hogwash and this isn’t true. It’s quite common in Irish English, where its spelling is sometimes anglicised to reflect pronunciation, as rawmaish, raumaish or rawmaysh, or in the gerund form rawmaishing. In her MED Magazine article ‘ Talking Nonsense: old-fashioned terms for nonsense in English’, Diane Nicholls reports that poppycock originates in a Dutch dialectal word, pappekak, which translates literally as “soft dung”, while bunkum and its abbreviated form bunk hail from Buncombe, a county in North Carolina, owing to a minor political incident there in the early 19th century.Īn Irish word meaning nonsense or foolish talk – one I use now and then – is ráiméis. Some have histories as curious as their sound and appearance. Though highly popular in informal contexts, these coarse expressions are generally avoided in polite company, or some other strategy is used for example, bullshit may be euphemised transparently as B.S. Other synonyms are more blunt, few more so than bullshitand its neighbours crap, bollocks and the like. Consider the old Irish expression: “There’s a great deal of sense outside your head.” Most of the line sounds like a sober compliment, until the word outside delivers an abrupt insult and a humorous absurdity. This would fall under the subfield of pragmatics known as politeness theory. Maybe their playfulness, though it stresses the silliness of what’s being criticised, also softens the blow of criticism. These are words to delight in, flamboyant terms that parade themselves in a sentence and often stand alone. Think of baloney, balderdash, piffle, gobbledegook, gibberish, poppycock, flapdoodle, twaddle, tommyrot, hogwash, hooey, and a load of old cobblers. But for one piece, they thought it hard, From the whole hog to be debarr'd And set their wits to work, to find What joint the prophet had in mind.Many words for nonsense have an entertaining, almost clownish feel. Had he the sinful part express'd, They might, with safety, eat the rest. But it is perhaps rather from the allegorical story (recorded in English from 1779) of Muslim sophists, forbidden by their faith from eating a certain unnamed part of the hog, who debated which part was intended and in the end managed to exempt the whole of it from the prohibition. Phrase go the whole hog (1828, American English) is sometimes said to be from the butcher shop option of buying the whole slaughtered animal (at a discount) rather than just the choice bits. Hog in armor "awkward or clumsy person in ill-fitting attire" is from 1650s (later used of the armadillo). To go hog-wild is American English from 1904. Road hog is attested from 1886, hence hog "rude person heedless of the convenience or safety of others" (1906). Meaning "Harley-Davidson motorcycle" is attested from 1967. As a term of opprobrium for a greedy or gluttonous person, c. Possibility of British Celtic origin is regarded by OED as "improbable."Įxtended to the wild boar by late 15c. in hogaster), "a swine," especially a castrated male, "swine reared for slaughter" (usually about a year old), also used by stockmen for "young sheep before the first shearing" (early 14c.) and for "horse older than one year," suggesting the original sense had to do with age, not type of animal. Mid-14c., hogge, but probably in Old English (implied late 12c.
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