When told The London Observer had reported that President Reagan had postponed a colonoscopy because of the 1984 election campaign, the White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, “That’s not true, that’s poppycock, as the British would say. Poppycock, an older term for codswallop comes in lots rather than loads. Schur’s English English, the noun codswallop, defined as “hot air,” follows a slang verb, cod, meaning “to horse around.” Mineral waters were sold in such bottles and, wallop being a slang term for fizzy ale, the contents became known as Codd’s wallop.” An alternative etymology is suggested by Farmer and Henley’s slang dictionary, completed in 1904, which describes cods as a term of venery. Poppycock! James McDonald, in his 1984 book Wordly Wise, writes that in the 19th century “an inventor called Hiram Codd patented a new type of bottle with a glass marble in its neck. Meaning 'Harley-Davidson motorcycle' is attested from 1967. As a term of opprobrium for a greedy or gluttonous person, c. is regarded by OED as 'improbable.' Extended to the wild boar by late 15c. The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary published in 1972 tosses in an etymological sponge with a despairing “Origin unknown.” Possibility of British Celtic origin Watkins, etc. The word, meaning “nonsense,” is British English: As a slang synonym for rubbish, bosh, humbug, hogwash, tommyrot, tripe and drivel, the newer codswallop was observed in The Radio Times in 1963. Hogwash Meaning: (Noun) Hogwash was not considered a formal word and was not found in any literary pieces until the 1400s. Jack: Hogcock, which is a combination of hogwash and poppycock. Charig of the British Museum of Natural History in London told New Scientist magazine: “We think the suggestion that it’s a fake is a load of codswallop.” Hogwash, slang for nonsense, first referred to the refuse of a kitchen or brewery. Meaning 'clothes set aside to be washed' is attested from 1789 meaning 'thin coat of paint' is recorded from 1690s sense of 'land alternately covered and exposed by the sea' is recorded from mid-15c. Faced with a charge by Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astrophysicist, that the fossil known as Archaeopteryx - whose reptilian bones adorned with beautifully preserved feathers suggest a link between reptiles and birds - is a fake, Alan J. wash (n.) late Old English wsc 'act of washing,' from wash (v.).
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