codswallop
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkɒdzˌwɒl.əp/
rhymes: -ɒləp
Forms: form: cod's wallop
form: cods wallop
Etymology: Unknown. Attested from a 1959 episode of the UK TV series Hancock's Half Hour. The writers (Galton and Simpson) state that the phrase was in general use when the show was broadcast. A national TV appeal in the UK in 2006 failed to find earlier references, though a humorous newspaper column from 1947 does use the fictional name "Sir Aubrey Codswallop". Originally written (1963) codswallop; the spelling cod's wallop is later.
Various etymologies are proposed from some sense of cod, such as from cod (“joke, imitation”) + -s- + wallop (“beer”) (slang), hence “imitation beer” (with interconsonantal -s- to ease pronunciation of -dw-), or from cod (“scrotum, as in codpiece”) + -s- + wallop (“to hit”), hence “to hit (with) the testicle bag,” or from cod (“fish”), hence perhaps some part of the fish, as used in the fishing industry.
A frequently given etymology, although widely rejected as a folk etymology, derives it from Hiram Codd, British soft drink maker of the 1870s, known for the eponymous Codd-neck bottle, with the suggestion that codswallop is a derisive term for soft drinks by beer drinkers, from Codd’s + wallop (“beer”), thus sarcastically “Codd’s beer”. There is no evidence that early uses had this sense; the slang term wallop (“beer”) appeared after Codd’s lifetime, initial spellings (in print from 1963) do not reflect such a derivation (*Codd’s wallop and *coddswallop with -dd- are not found), and there is an 80-year gap between the proposed coinage and attestation.
This is also the name given to the wooden device placed over the neck of a codd bottle and given a push (wallop) to dislodge the marble in the neck of the bottle. The word has also been used to describe the process of opening a codd bottle.
Senses: examples: text: Tony: I was not.
Sidney: Don’t give me that old codswallop. You were counting your money.
ref: 1959, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Hancock’s Half Hour:
text: Just branding a programme as ‘rubbish’, ‘tripe’, or—there are a lot of these—‘codswallop’, gives little indication of what moved the viewer to write.
ref: 1963 October 17, Radio Times, 52/2:
text: An interviewer from a Warsaw radio station stopped a citizen in the street. Was the recent demonstration necessary? “History will tell.” But what did he think? “I am not a historian.” Likewise Lumsden′s and Wilson′s book. If it is not a load of codswallop, it will turn out to be very important. If it is not a load of codswallop. Faites vos jeux!
ref: 1981 October 1, John Turner, “Review: Autumn Books: Prometheus bounded?”, in New Scientist, page 41:
text: 1993, J. Neville Turner, The One-Day Game – Cricket or Codswallop?, in 2001, David John Headon, The Best Ever Australian Sports Writing: A 200 Year Collection.
text: “I′ve told you all I know,” Rosa Armaz told Boarski and Yermin, “I don′t know what my husband has been doing. He′d mentioned going to Mars with the children but I thought it was a load of codswallop.”
ref: 2010, Grahame Howard, The Wishing Book 3 – Extermination, page 66:
synonyms: word: hogswallop
word: absurdity
word: all my eye
word: all my eye and Betty Martin
word: applesauce
word: bafflegab
word: balderdash
word: balls
word: baloney
word: banana oil
word: Bandini
word: baragouin
word: batcrap
word: batshit
word: bilgewater
word: blah
word: blather
word: blatherskite
word: bobbins
word: bollocks
word: bosh
word: BS
word: bull
word: bullcrap
word: bulldust
word: bull feathers
word: bullshit
word: bullspeak
word: bunk
word: bunkum
word: bushwah
word: clamjamfrey
word: claptrap
word: cobblers
word: codswallop
word: crap
word: crock
word: crock of shit
word: double Dutch
word: double talk
word: doublespeak
word: dribble
word: drivel
word: eyewash
word: fiddle-faddle
word: flapdoodle
word: flim-flam
word: flizz
word: flummery
word: folderol
word: foolishness
word: footle
word: framis
word: fuckery
word: fuckry
word: fudge
word: galimatias
word: garbage
word: garble
word: gibber
word: gibberish
word: gobbledygook
word: gossip
word: Greek
word: guff
word: gup
word: hoax
word: hocus-pocus
word: hogwash
word: hokum
word: hooey
word: horsefeathers
word: horse hockey
word: horse piss
word: horse puckey
word: horseshit
word: humbug
word: Irish bull
word: jabber
word: jargon
word: jibber-jabber
word: jimjam
word: jive
word: junk
word: lallation
word: macaroni
word: malarkey
word: manure
word: meaninglessness
word: moonshine
word: mumbo jumbo
word: nertz
word: nonsense
word: pie in the sky
word: piffle
word: pigswill
word: poppycock
word: prattle
word: put-on
word: rhubarb
word: rhubarb rhubarb
word: rigmarole
word: rot
word: rubbish
word: ruse
word: santorum
word: shit
word: shite
word: skimble-skamble
word: squit
word: stuff
word: stuff and nonsense
word: tommy-rot
word: tosh
word: tush
word: trash
word: tripe
word: twaddle
word: wass
word: whiff-whaff
word: word salad
glosses: Senseless talk or writing; nonsense; rubbish.