Bunk & its Buddies
English
is rife with colorful terms referring to irrelevant, useless, or empty words. As
we ramp up to ramping up to elections, let’s celebrate a few of them.
Bunk appeared in American English about 1900 as a shortened form of bunkum,
meaning nonsense. By most accounts
the term was born in the US House of Representatives when North Carolina
Representative Felix Walker threw in his two cents regarding Missouri’s
statehood in relation to the Mason-Dixon Line. He needed to say something that
would appear in the papers back home in Buncombe, so he unabashedly made a "long, dull, irrelevant speech." In
time, Buncombe shifted to bunkum, which got shortened to bunk.
Blatherskite, was born during the American Revolution, & refers to both the
words spoken by a talkative, nonsensical person & the person him/herself.
It comes of blather, meaning to
babble. Blather is a Scottish
term derived from an Old Norse word meaning to
wag the tongue, added to skite, meaning a contemptible individual. We see a
related ending in the word cheapskate, & a related
beginning in the term blithering idiot. Skite also originated
in Old Norse, from a word meaning to
shoot, which apparently is what the Old Norse thought should be done with
blatherers.
Bosh came to English in the 1830s from Turkish. Its literal Turkish meaning
of empty,
applies in English only to meaningless speech or writing.
Claptrap appeared in the 1730s & meant a
stage trick to catch applause. Since then we’ve lost the applause-inducing
element of the term & it simply means cheap,
nonsensical or pretentious language.
There
are so many great synonyms for bunk, blatherskite, bosh & claptrap.
Followers, what empty-word words would you add to the list?
Fascinating as usual, Mr. Monger. I had no idea that "claptrap" once meant exactly what it sounds like. And the derivation of bunk is so perfect--it came from Congress! I'm wondering if "skite", meaning contemptible, is also related to an all-purpose Anglo-Saxon word we use today, which has a more polite version: "scat". I suppose under certain circumstances "scat" can be "shot" but I don't suppose that's something anybody wants to hear about unless they're in the Pepto-Bismol business. And it may all be bosh.
ReplyDeleteThanks for another fun and enlightening post!
Shall we add "numbskull" - an empty-headed idiot who persists in blathering his bosh. Perhaps it was someone's skite that numbed said pate? However it happened, the end result is the same: a bunkum-monger blithering his claptrap to the detriment of our poor ears...
ReplyDeleteSusan & Anne,
ReplyDeleteTahnks for popping by. Anne, I can't find a connection between skite & the synonym for scat, though I like the idea that they might be connected. Susan, I'll do my best not to move into the realm of bunkum-mongering.