What a load of old.......

...fill in as appropriate. Some choices that you might like to consider are listed below :-) You may of course have some perfectly good suggestions of your own!

Balderdash


The origin of this wonderful word is unknown but it was certainly in use by the time of Shakespeare. At the time it meant froth or a frothy liquid or even a jumble of liquids e.g. milk and beer. Only in the latter part of the 17th century did it become known for its current meaning.

Baloney

This is an Americanism from the early 20th century and comes from baloney the sausage. The implication that this food type of possibly iffy origins was junk had came to mean a generalised term for junk by the 1930s- a bit like we use spam in connection with junk emails today.

Claptrap

The first use of the word was as theatre slang in the 18th century when a line or speech in a play was designed to elicit ["trap"] applause ["claps"] from the audience. Our usage of it comes from the 19th century.



 Codswallop

Taken from Lock, Stock and Barrel the term may come from a newly invented soft drink from the 19th century. The story goes [it is not proven] that a novel type of mineral water bottle was invented by by Hiram Codd which had a marble in its neck that was held in place by the pressure of the gas inside the bottle as a stopper. At that time Wallop was a slang term for beer so Codd's Wallop was the rather rude term given by drinkers to Mr Codd's mineral waters and soft drinks

Hogwash

From the wash [swill] given to the swine [hog]. In 1440 it was spelt as hoggyswasch! The first written record of the modern meaning is seen in 1712.

Twaddle

Derived from twattle meaning to talk foolishly. A twattle basket was a chatter box.

I myself plump for poppycock- this now I find means soft dung in Dutch so I might as well have said bullsh*t all along!

Arilx