![]() ![]() In Counterpunch, Abby Martin discusses vile terms such as mowing the lawn (mowing down civilians) and other revolting uses of language: "Disturbing Newspeak phrases that absolve their pillaging and mass murder have permeated society and warped our interpretation of reality." That's the essence of newspeak: thought control. Nowadays any kind of baffling or coercive language used by politicians or the media could be labeled newspeak, particularly euphemisms. Their overall purpose is control: That's why newspeak caught on as a term for language that seems determined to stifle thought rather than convey it. Newspeak isn't quite a language: It is a group of mostly compound terms such as goodsex and crimethink. Some BS words have a more literary pedigree than others, and that's certainly true of this word coined by George Orwell in his famous dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949. If we ever run out of them, I'll be gobsmacked. This very popular word can be found everywhere from Irish newspapers to the title of literary magazine the Gobshite Quarterly. As seen in words like drivel and palaver, spit is never far from the bullshit lexicon. Its 1986 use in John Hockey's Squaddies: Portrait of a Subculture is characteristic, as the author describes a sergeant who "was a regular gobshite always shouting at you in barracks."Īnother sense of gob may have influenced this word: It's been a verb meaning spitting and a noun for a wad of spit. By the mid-20th century it can be found referring to a fool, then a fool with a big mouth. This mostly Irish word first turns up as a term for a seaman in the U.S. Then you could tell your friend to make up for the insult by buying you nachos.Įven if you elude Big Brother, there's no escape from Big Bullshit. If a friend said, "I heard you hate nachos," you could reply, "Applesauce!" as a firm denial. The word can also be used a simple dismissal of something. Often it means lies or flattery, as in this example from Ring Lardner Jr.'s The Love Nest and Other Stories: "I wasn't born yesterday and I know apple sauce when I hear it, and I bet you've told that to 50 girls." Or maybe applesauce tasted like pure crap to someone, because this has been a synonym for nonsense since at least the 1920s. Maybe this term was influenced by horse apples, a euphemism for horseshit. Horseshit and rubbish aren't highly valued, to say the least.īut applesauce? That origin isn't so clear. It's obvious why some words become synonyms for bullshit. Here, in an excerpt from his new book, Bullshit: A Lexicon (Three Rivers Press), Peters shares five colorful phrases to add to your vocabulary. -Jill Krasny Applesauce Fortunately, Mark Peters, card-carrying member of the American Dialect Society who happens to write the Best Joke Ever column for McSweeney's, has your number. You need something forceful. Hilarious. Eloquent. You know the deal: You're sitting at work, bored out of your skull, and BS is no longer cutting it. A particular favorite detail was random fans sending Ruth weight-loss tips, including a woman from Cleveland who “urged Ruth to eat ten pineapples a day.Sometimes you've gotta call a spade a stinking pile of horseshit. Still, the premise’s validity doesn’t really matter because Taylor delivers the Ruthian goods. For sure, the scandal was a black eye for baseball, but how much quantitative harm did it actually do? Taylor cites anecdotal tabloid headlines and a precipitous drop in American League attendance when the Yankees weren’t in town as evidence of the “Tarnished Game.” But he doesn’t account for the hotly contested National League having a significant attendance increase that season, even after it became public that all-time great Rogers Hornsby owed a bookie $93,000. Two future Hall of Famers, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, were suspended in the offseason for alleged game-fixing years earlier, but the investigation was dropped and neither missed a game. It’s debatable whether Ruth “rescued” baseball, but he definitely saves the book, because Taylor’s contention that the sport was at the abyss is speculative at best. ![]()
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