Chrysti The Wordsmith: Balderdash - 4

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. There are plenty of fine polysyllables in the English language that refer to nonsense and piffle words such as balderdash and baloney. Lately on Christie the wordsmith we've explored the biographies of these terms. Today we turn to poppycock and expletive with an old fashioned British feel about it. A word that might splatter from the lips of a beam on a cold infuriated English gentleman. Oh poppycock. But the British can't claim this one. It appears that the term was introduced by Dutch speakers in America. It first showed up in print an eight hundred fifty two in the New York Daily Times as an expletive meaning nonsense and rubbish etymologists have offered two theories on the origin of poppycock. One has the word deriving from two Dutch based elements. The first is papa p a p p e the equivalent of the English word pap. Meaning soft food as for infants and cock. K aka meaning excrement according to this theory poppycock literally means soft

dog and by extension something worthless. Idea to also claims a Dutch origin but this one suggests that the first syllable of poppycock derives from pop POPC the Dutch word for Dall. Add that to the element cock k k meaning dung. And we have a word that means literally doll's excrement and imaginary and positively worthless substance. Poppycock. Next time I Christi the wordsmith. Gobbledygook. Christi the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises. A high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry sued web dotcom.