Bullshit Artists I Say Again Bullshit Artist
Sometimes you've gotta call a spade a stinking pile of horseshit. Y'all know the deal: You lot're sitting at work, bored out of your skull, and BS is no longer cut it. Y'all need something forceful. Hilarious. Eloquent. Fortunately, Marker Peters, menu-carrying member of the American Dialect Club who happens to write the Best Joke Always column for McSweeney'southward, has your number. Here, in an excerpt from his new book, Bullshit: A Lexicon (3 Rivers Press), Peters shares five colorful phrases to add together to your vocabulary. —Jill Krasny
Absurdity
It's obvious why some words get synonyms for bullshit. Horseshit and rubbish aren't highly valued, to say the least.
But absurdity? That origin isn't so clear. Mayhap this term was influenced by horse apples, a euphemism for horseshit. Or maybe applesauce tasted similar pure crap to someone, considering this has been a synonym for nonsense since at least the 1920s. Often information technology ways lies or flattery, as in this example from Ring Lardner Jr.'due south The Love Nest and Other Stories: "I wasn't born yesterday and I know apple sauce when I hear it, and I bet you lot've told that to fifty girls."
The word can also be used a simple dismissal of something. If a friend said, "I heard y'all hate nachos," you could reply, "Applesauce!" equally a house deprival. So you lot could tell your friend to make up for the insult past buying you nachos.
Bananas
The banana is the craziest fruit. But bananas—and banana oil—can also mean bullshit.
Also the close human relationship between bullshit and craziness, this term is inspired by amyl acetate solution—which is nicknamed banana liquid or banana oil for its odour and is used in diverse foods and medicines.
English writer and humorist P. G. Wodehouse used this term in his 1960 novel Jeeves in the Offing, mentioning "the sort of banana oil that passes between statesmen at conferences conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality earlier they tear their whiskers off and get downwardly to cases." Evidently, it was the smoothness of banana oil that led to its beingness used as a term for flattery and other smooth talk. If you didn't have the relevant facts or a stiff argument, y'all had to resort to banana oil. Slippery liquids go well with glace words.
You can besides shout "Bananas!" if "Hogwash!" and "Bunk!" have gotten wearisome. F. Scott Fitzgerald used that sense of the word in 1940's Pat Hobby Stories, every bit the title character responded to some hurtful accusations with "Aw, bananas." That response was equivalent to "Come up on, man. That'south not true."
Gobshite
Do you know anyone who talks a lot of shit? That person is a gobshite, which literally ways mouth shit and figuratively means a loudmouth, specially a impaired 1.
This more often than not Irish give-and-take get-go turns up every bit a term for a seaman in the U.S. Navy in the early 1900s. Past the mid-20th century it tin be constitute referring to a fool, and so a fool with a big mouth. Its 1986 use in John Hockey's Squaddies: Portrait of a Subculture is characteristic, as the writer describes a sergeant who "was a regular gobshite always shouting at you in barracks."
Another sense of gob may accept influenced this give-and-take: It's been a verb meaning spitting and a substantive for a wad of spit. As seen in words like drivel and palaver, spit is never far from the bullshit dictionary.
This very pop word can exist found everywhere from Irish gaelic newspapers to the title of literary mag the Gobshite Quarterly. The world is full of gobshites. If nosotros e'er run out of them, I'll exist gobsmacked.
Newspeak
Some BS words take a more literary pedigree than others, and that'southward certainly true of this word coined by George Orwell in his famous dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949.
Newspeak isn't quite a language: Information technology is a group of more often than not compound terms such equally goodsex and crimethink. Their overall purpose is control: That's why newspeak caught on equally a term for language that seems adamant to stifle idea rather than convey information technology.
Nowadays whatsoever kind of inexplainable or coercive language used by politicians or the media could be labeled newspeak, peculiarly euphemisms. In Counterpunch, Abby Martin discusses vile terms such as mowing the lawn (mowing down civilians) and other revolting uses of language: "Agonizing Newspeak phrases that absolve their pillaging and mass murder have permeated society and warped our interpretation of reality." That's the essence of newspeak: thought control.
This discussion launched the suffix -speak, which can exist found in words such every bit direction-speak, teacher-speak, and parent-speak.
Information technology'south a tough world. Fifty-fifty if you lot elude Big Brother, in that location'southward no escape from Large Bullshit.
Many people have probably looked at Jackson Pollock's artwork—in all its paint-splattering, abstract glory—and thought, "That's bullshit." Some may feel that Niagara Falls is like a leaky faucet compared to the 1000 Canyon, and therefore bullshit.
Notwithstanding, there's a simpler caption for why these terms are in the bullshit lexicon: You lot can blame Cockney rhyming slang. Niagara Falls rhymes with balls, and Jackson Pollock rhymes with bollock. And then just every bit apples and pears means stairs, these names took on new meanings—for testicles and nonsense.
Whether a load of Niagara Falls is more bullshit than a bunch of Jackson Pollocks is difficult to say.
Trumpery
Here's a BS word with a long history and many specific purposes, tiny and catchy though they may be.
The first was a type of hornswoggling. Trumpery was originally expert by criminals and scam artists. Like so many other words related to trickery and bridge selling, the word shifted to mean more full general nonsense, this one in the 1400s. Oxford English language Dictionary examples often involve something mystical or woo-woo: There's a mention of "metaphysical trumpery," and superstition and Freemasonry both get lumped with trumpery. A Ouija board is a good example of trumpery.
Insignificance is besides key to trumpery. If something matters at all, it can't be trumpery. Cyberspace outrage is a proficient example of trumpery: If someone is treating a mag comprehend (featuring, say, airbrushing or breast-feeding) as though information technology were the 2d coming of Stalin, that's trumpery: a trumped-upwardly triviality.
A 2013 review of the movie Admire in the San Francisco Chronicle embraces the distracting, unwanted essence of trumpery: "There's so much trumpery on parade, including a relentless air of self-importance, that information technology's even hard to simply enjoy the performances of the ii stars, who give more than the film deserves." Sounds like it could take been a good pic if not for the pretentious BS.
Reprinted from Bullshit: A Lexicon.Copyright © 2022 by Mark Peters. Published by 3 Rivers Printing, a division of Random Firm LLC, a Penguin Random House Company.
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