Balderdash
senseless, stupid, or exaggerated talk or writing; nonsense.
Obsolete. a muddled mixture of liquors.
Historical Examples
I listened to some old wife’s balderdash, and thought it true.
The Deemster Hall Caine
Then why all this balderdash about shock, rejection, and so on?
Highways in Hiding George Oliver Smith
How can you help being the mothers, daughters, &c. of Snobs, so long as this balderdash is set before you?
The Book of Snobs William Makepeace Thackeray
I suppose all that balderdash means that you are tired of London.
The Harlequin Opal, Vol. 1 (of 3) Fergus Hume
Every reader will agree with Nash, I suppose, in condemning this as balderdash.
The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare J. J. Jusserand
You will now hear what we call in the profession ‘balderdash.’
The Marriage Contract Honore de Balzac
He pronounced this balderdash with much solemnity and with great effect upon the assembled train hands.
McAllister and His Double Arthur Train
“light airs of wind from the east” means a member for Galway and some balderdash about the Greeks.
Cornelius O’Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General Charles Lever
There followed a tedious debate, a muddy flow of gabble and balderdash.
In the Year of Jubilee George Gissing
balderdash, bawl′dėr-dash, n. idle senseless talk: anything jumbled together without judgment: obscene language or writing.
Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) Various
noun
stupid or illogical talk; senseless rubbish
n.
1590s, of unknown origin; originally a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.), transferred 1670s to “senseless jumble of words.” From dash; first element perhaps cognate with Danish balder “noise, clatter” (cf. boulder).
interjection
Nonsense!: pure balderdash
[1674+; originally denoted a frothy liquid or an unappetizing mixture of drinks]
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