Cow-slaverĪn old 18th-century northern English word for nonsense, in the sense of something completely worthless: cow-slaver is literally the froth or drool that forms around a cow’s mouth as it eats. And so by extension the name Collyweston itself eventually came to refer to contradictory, inconsistent nonsense. As the village became more widely known, the “west” part of its name inspired a pun in Victorian slang: “to be all colley-west,” or “to have your colley west” meant to be lopsided, out of place, or facing the wrong way. CollywestonĬollyweston is the name of a rural village in Northamptonshire, England, that made a name for itself in the early 19th century for the production of local high-quality slate. The 18th-century expression "To blather like a bubbly-jock," meaning “to talk rubbish,” brings together two brilliant old dialect words: Blather (as in blatherskite, another word for a habitual gossip) is an old Scots word ultimately derived from an earlier Scandinavian word for chatter or prattle, and bubbly-jock is an old nickname for a male turkey. Precisely who (or what) Betty Martin was is a mystery: different theories suggest it might once have been a nickname for an unknown piece of naval equipment, the name of an eccentric Irish theatre-owner and actress working in 18th century London, or a corruption of a little-known Latin prayer, Ora pro nobis beate Martine (“Pray for us, blessed Martin”). From there, it went on to be used in a variety of increasingly strange extended expressions, such as "All my eye and my grandmother!" and "All my eye and Betty Martin!," which dates back to the 1780s. All my eye and Betty Martin!Īll my eye! first emerged in British English as a means of dismissing someone talking complete nonsense in the early 1700s. The stories behind 12 even more obscure and bizarre words and phrases meaning “nonsense” are explored here. And poppycock either comes from a Dutch dialect word for “soft poop,” or from the old Dutch expression zo fijn als gemalen poppekak-literally “as fine as powdered doll’s excrement.” ( No, really.) Bunkum comes from a pointless speech given by the Congressman for Buncombe County, North Carolina, in 1820. Codswallop was probably originally a nickname for poor-quality beer, perhaps named after bottle manufacturer Hiram Codd. Balderdash is thought to have once been a mixture of frothy liquors, or the foamy water used by a barber to shave a customer. But as ridiculous-sounding as some of these words are, they all still have their own histories and etymologies behind them. The English language has dozens of weird ways of calling out someone for talking utter rubbish-and these aren’t even the strangest.
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