According to DARE, hockey is mainly used in the South Midland of the U.S., and it’s preferred by children, which I take offense to, because I prefer the heck out of it. This may not have the same ring to it as horse hockey, but bull hockey conveys the same meaning in a folksy way. They have to be drunk to think the American people will buy their bull fodder." I reckon bull-fodder sounds a little like bullfather, a somewhat redundant term that reminds me of another excellent euphemism: gentleman cow. A 2013 comment on an article from Capital Hill Blue uses the term: "Yes Alcohol impairs judgment….look at the platform and the policies. This term apparently originated in Australia, and it dates back to the early 20th century. A New York Daily News article from 1974 includes this memorable use: "You are adding apples and oranges and getting bull-feathers." It has a few other close relatives: pig feathers and the Australian kangaroo feathers. While not as common as the equally euphemistic horsefeathers, this term can be found here and there. Sadly, I can find no lexical examples of labradoodle dust. The wonderful Dictionary of American Regional English traces another variation, heifer dust, back to the 1940s. They know better than anyone but they will never say it publicly." Warning: Bull butter does not go well with meadow mayonnaise.Īmong many other meanings besides the literal, dust has sometimes been a term for excrement, as seen in this term, plus donkey dust and gorilla dust, which was used by the late Phil Hartman on NewsRadio. It also turns up on a 2013 post of a Houston Texans message board asking, "Can Schaub take us to the Super Bowl?" An outraged commenter (is that redundant?) responds: "That's bull-butter! The guy is obviously the weak-link. This rare term was recorded by college slang collector extraordinaire, Connie Elbe. Bullbird is alliterative and absurd: it’s as unnatural a hybrid as the centaur, and therefore fitting for BS that’s also an affront to everything decent and right. On It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Frank Reynolds was surprisingly tasteful when he used this zoologically questionable term, which I absolutely love. As the always wonderful Green’s Dictionary of Slang and Historical Dictionary of American Slang show, bull X terms are piled high in the lexicon of colloquial English.ĭisclaimer: All these terms are as real as horse apples. So I’m going to whet your BS appetite while sharing a bunch of real terms that euphemize BS using the formula bull plus… well, just about anything. Or is it? In fact, the vast majority of my book is non-sweary, and it includes a heckuva lot of euphemisms. Not being able to name my book could be construed as an obstacle in my quest to use this column for shameless self-promotion. Fittingly, I can only state its title euphemistically in this column about euphemisms.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |