Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2001
- Messages
- 51,580
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- Inside a starship, watching puny humans from afar
It means the same as 'piffle'.And what does "balderdash" mean?
It means the same as 'piffle'.And what does "balderdash" mean?
And poppycock and codswallop. I want to make up some: It's total wimble, He's talking slugsnot, What a load of eggdrain.It means the same as 'piffle'.
An American one I like is 'horse pucky'.And poppycock and codswallop. I want to make up some: It's total wimble, He's talking slugsnot, What a load of eggdrain.
What? Do you think I was born yesterday?An American one I like is 'horse pucky'.
What? Do you think I was born yesterday?
It's another phrase for calling out horse pucky.
True. You never hear of the "Winter Chicken." Sounds like a new Marvel character."Spring chicken"
As in "She's no spring chicken".
What's that about? I know what it means, but it seems a bit random.
Sounds like a bit of a turkey.True. You never hear of the "Winter Chicken." Sounds like a new Marvel character.
Or Horsefeathers.It means the same as 'piffle'.
What? Do you think I was born yesterday?
It's another phrase for calling out horse pucky.
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=claptrapclaptrap (n.)
1730, "a trick to 'catch' applause," a stage term; from clap (v.) + trap (n.). Extended sense of "cheap, showy language" is from 1819; hence "nonsense, rubbish."
Claptrap was one I used to hear my grandad say. Plus he used the word clappers to mean the same thing. “ You don’t arf talk a lot of clappers”, I can hear him saying it now.Another slang term for nonsense / bullshit is "claptrap." It wasn't until I looked into it today that I learned it was originally a theater term somewhat similar to today's "-bait" (as in "click-bait') to mean something done or presented to elicit audience applause / approval (i.e., "applause-bait").
It wasn't until later the word was used to mean "rubbish."
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=claptrap
'Blather' - where did that one come from?
I guess it's related to 'blether' and 'blither'.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/blatherblather (v.)
1520s, blether, Scottish, probably from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse blaðra "mutter, wag the tongue," perhaps of imitative origin, or from Proto-Germanic *blodram "something inflated" (the source of bladder). ...
blather (n.)
"nonsense, foolish talk," 1787, blether, from blather (v.).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/blither?utm_source=related_entriesblither (v.)
1868, variant of blether "talk nonsense" (1520s), a northern British and Scottish word ...
blithering (adj.)
1880, present-participle adjective (from the first typically with idiot) from blither (v.) "to talk nonsense." From 1872 as a verbal noun.
"Sweet" Fanny Adams was an 8 year old murder victim, who was murdered and dismembered in 1867.Sweet Fanny Adams! Not sure where the sweet came from but I always assumed it meant sweet F**k All
…the very poor quality tinned mutton issued to British servicemen in subsequent years acquired the nickname "Fanny Adams" in a jocular but vile allusion that it was so unpalatable that it might as well have been bits of the poor chopped-up girl.
"I'm pulling your leg"
How did that come about to mean that someone was deliberately making something up to fool you humourously?
Why pulling? And why the leg?
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pull+(one's)+leg... Note: There are two possible explanations for this expression, althoughthere is no proof for either. One suggestion is that in the past, when someone was being hanged, their friends or family sometimes pulled their legs hard so that they died more quickly and suffered less. Alternatively, the expression may refer to thieves tripping people up before they robbed them.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pull+(one's)+legTo tease or fool someone; to trick someone in a humorous way. This term for a time was thought to allude to the gruesome practice of pulling on the legs of a person who was being hanged in order to shorten his or her agony. In fact, however, the current meaning of the cliché dates only from the late nineteenth century, long after hanging was accomplished in more humane fashion (by means of a long drop). Most authorities now believe it alludes to tricking a person by tripping them, using a cane or foot or other object that, in effect, holds back one of their legs so that they fall. Current in England in the late nineteenth century, it had crossed the Atlantic by 1910, when O. Henry wrote, “You can’t pull my leg,” in his story A Little Local Color.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/pull#etymonline_v_2836pull (v.)
... To pull (someone's) leg is from 1882, perhaps on notion of "playfully tripping" (compare pull the long bow "exaggerate," 1830, and pulling someone's leg also sometimes was described as a way to awaken a sleeping person in a railway compartment, ship's berth, etc.). Thornton's "American Glossary" (1912) has pull (n.) "a jest" (to have a pull at (someone)), which it identifies as "local" and illustrates with an example from the Massachusetts Spy of May 21, 1817, which identifies it as "a Georgian phrase."
My grandmother used to say someone was "like a cow with a musket" if they were awkward or clumsy.
Sara Coleridge, Memoir and Letters (1873)It is remarkable what fine hands men of genius write, even when they are as awkward in all other uses of the hand as a cow with a musket.
Which reminds me of the following quote which I thought came from The Simpsons, (but now I can't find it);
"It's like a donkey with a banjo - nobody knows how it got it, or what it's going to do with it?!"
I think it may have its origins in the batch testing of mustard. In consistency testing, the mustard has to be finely ground and wet enough to spread well. The tester lays a dob of it on a special metal plate and a thin scraper is applied to see how far the mustard will spread. If it's too thick, the scraper won't cut the mustard and it won't spread far. Tomato sauce is tested in the same way, IIRC.So what's the origin of 'cut the mustard' (as in when something isn't really good enough and it doesn't 'cut the mustard')?