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Bullshit: A Lexicon - Hardcover

Peters, Mark

 
9781101904534: Bullshit: A Lexicon
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1101904534 ISBN 13: 9781101904534
Verlag: Crown, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

An irreverent lexicon of the seemingly infinite ways we call bullshit, written by a McSweeney's columnist and etymologist, illustrated by a New Yorker-contributing cartoonist.

What's the difference between "balderdash" and "drivel"? Where did "mumbo-jumbo" come from? How should you use "meadow mayonnaise"? What's "felgercarb" and which popular TV show coined it?

There are hundreds of common and rare terms for bullshit in English, including borrowings from German, turn-of-the-century sailors, The Simpsons, and beyond. Bullshit is everywhere, but not all of it is created equal. Mark Peters's Bullshit: A Lexicon is the handy guide to identifying and calling BS in all of its many forms, from "bunk" and "claptrap" to "applesauce" and "gobbledygook." Packed with historical facts, pop culture tidbits, and definitions for each term, Bullshit is perfect for humor readers, language lovers, and anyone looking to describe life's everyday annoyances.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MARK PETERS is a language expert, humorist, and member of the American Dialect Society. He has a PhD in English and has published articles about language for Esquire, Forbes, Mental Floss, Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, and Visual Thesaurus, where he writes the Evasive Maneuvers column about euphemisms. Mark also writes humor pieces, comedy sketches, and Twitter jokes (@wordlust), plus the Best Joke Ever column for McSweeney’s and the Laughing Stock blog for Psychology Today.

DREW DERNAVICH is a cartoonist and illustrator who regularly contributes to The New Yorker. His work has been featured in the Boston Globe, Time, and Harvard Business Review.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

abracadabra

Abracadabra is the kind of magical word you expect to hear when a dude in a top hat is pulling a rabbit out of another hat, sawing a woman in half, or making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

But abracadabra also means bullshit.

The word originally had a woo-­woo meaning not far from its eventual magical sense: It referred to spells and charms for healing. In fact, the word was used not only in speech; it was written on a piece of paper, with a letter removed in each line, like this:

abracadabra

abracadabr

abracadab

abracada

abracad

abraca

abrac

abra

abr

ab

a

The paper was then folded up and inserted into an amulet. Somehow, this was thought to help cure lupus or something, perhaps with the help of an herbal incantation.

From such medical hoodwinks, abracadabra also came to be used by professional magicians, which is mainly how we know the word today. But it also moved to the lexicon of general nonsense.

For example, this 1867 use from Biblical Repertory: “Swedenborg’s writings, as a whole, are unintelligible—­abracadabra—­to any other.” Another strong takedown of written bullshit appeared in a 1934 letter by poet Dylan Thomas: “Piece One is remarkable for the number of entirely meaningless & affected words you have managed to drag in. ‘Dulcimer,’ ‘Drumdeep,’ ‘Cohorts,’ & ‘Silken Shadowy Girls.’ All the damned abracadabra of the Poet’s Corner, and as gutless as a filleted herring.”

Ouch. Filleted herring = mucho malarkey.

ackamarackus

Watch out for the old ackamarackus. The formula the old ____ is common in expressions for swindles and scams. If someone gave you the old okey-­doke or the old flimflam, you got hustled. But the old ackamarackus is not just deceptive—­it’s a big, showy production. With syllables to spare, ackamarackus is the Broadway musical of BS words.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines this rhyming word as “Something regarded as pretentious nonsense; something intended to deceive; humbug.” A 1954 use in a review from London’s Sunday Times demonstrates the kind of showy, flamboyant stuff associated with the word: “The story is about an American circus in Germany, a spiv [petty criminal] who picks up a German floozie, a high diver who marries her, and a dumb giant who brings her wayside flowers.” This colorful, chaotic combo of characters was summed up by writer Dawn Powell: “In fact, it is the old circus ackamarackus.”

If you have something simple and/or honest to pre­sent, you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, and you certainly don’t need the major-­league ballyhoo that is an ackamarackus.

airy-­fairy

This term originally had to do with real fairies—­well, with the real idea of a fairy. The first known uses, from the mid-­1800s, all have to do with magical, ethereal, or light stuff, such as dresses and music. In the 1800s airy-­fairy also gravitated toward bullshit, probably because the fanciful world of fairies was far removed from the practical business of getting a damn job, you lazy bums.

By 1920 you could see examples like D. H. Lawrence’s description in Lost Girl of a character with “an airy-­fairy kind of knowledge of the whole affair.” That kind of expertise is anything but airtight.

all gas and gaiters

It’s fitting that a phrase for nonsense seems to have originated as nonsense: terms linked by alliteration and little else.

As Michael Quinion of World Wide Words notes, all gas and gaiters first appears in Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby and is used by a character who is, to use a technical term, bonkers. Even so, the expression had a positive vibe, which informed its early use for any satisfactory or swell state of affairs: “I see her now; I see her now! My love, my life, my bride, my peerless beauty. She is come at last—­at last—­and all is gas and gaiters!” The logic was unclear, but the meaning was not: When all is gas and gaiters, everything’s cool, fine, dandy, awesome, groovy, etc.

As so often happens with seemingly incomprehensible terms, people tried to make sense of all gas and gaiters—­mainly through interpreting the gaiters, which are protective cloth coverings for the legs. As slang expert Jonathon Green notes, the term conjures the “image of a pompous, sermonizing (and be-­gaitered) bishop.” Since such men of the cloth also tend to be gasbags, an illogical, random term gained a new meaning and a path to the lexicon of bullshit. If you’re all gas and gaiters, you’re minimum substance with maximum hot air.

By 1923 the term’s shift to hot air and hokum was complete. In 1932 George Bernard Shaw used the idiom with characteristic wit, referring to a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley as “literary gas and gaiters.”

All Gas and Gaiters was also the name of a 1960s British sitcom. That title pretty much meant All Bullshit.

all mouth and no trousers

If you’re all gas and gaiters, you’re all BS. If you’re all mouth and no trousers, you’re good at blabbing but not so good at action. You don’t back up your words, you noxious ninnyhammer.

This idiom is a good example of language evolution. The original version was all mouth and trousers. That use suggested a horny fellow, trying every pickup line in the book and thinking with his trouser region. A use in L. P. Hartley’s 1961 short story collection Two for the River slyly plays on this meaning: “It’s not a bad life. Most men are all mouth and trousers—­well, I like the trousers best, if you know what I mean.”

I think I do.

Eventually the idiom started taking on the negative form all mouth and no trousers, possibly influenced by all talk and no action. The meaning also shifted—­away from lasciviousness to any kind of empty words.

It’s best not to take this expression to heart. If you meet someone who’s literally all mouth and no trousers, call the police.

all my eye and Betty Martin

This satisfying exclamation—­which Agatha Christie enjoyed and used often—­has many close relatives. Saying “My eye!” is a way of saying “That’s bullshit!” or “Oh, come on!” You can also say “My foot!” or “My ass!” if your exclamatory anatomical preferences are less ocular.

The phrase all my eye also means nonsense. Though this is a mostly dated expression going back to the late 1700s, it still turns up once in a while, as in this 2012 use in the Irish Times: “So attractive as it is, that explanation may itself be all my eye.” When it comes to words, overattractive, neat explanations do tend to be pure poppycock.

Which brings us to the more dramatic version of this expression: All my eye and Betty Martin! Translation: “That is such a huge load of crap I need a two-­part exclamation to dismiss it!”

Who was Betty Martin? No one knows for sure. Some think the name was part of a lost Latin prayer, but since the prayer is lost, who knows? Others think it was a piece of nautical equipment. Maybe she was just a London woman who liked to say “All my eye!” a lot. We may never know the true origin, but if you ever meet a Betty Martin, congratulate her on being part of bullshit history.

applesauce

It’s obvious why some words become synonyms for bullshit. Horseshit and rubbish aren’t highly valued, to say the...

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Verlag
Crown
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1101904534
ISBN 13 
9781101904534
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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gpsr@libri.de

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