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codswallop

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
18
Words With Friends
22
Letters
10
Pronunciation
/ˈkɒdzˌwɒl.əp/

Definition of codswallop

2 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang, uncountable)Senseless talk or writing; nonsense; rubbish.
    “Tony: I was not. Sidney: Don’t give me that old codswallop. You were counting your money.”
    “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.”
    “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!”
    “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.”
    ““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.””
See all 2 definitions

noun

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang, uncountable)Senseless talk or writing; nonsense; rubbish.
    “Tony: I was not. Sidney: Don’t give me that old codswallop. You were counting your money.”
    “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.”
    “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!”
    “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.”
    ““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.””

intj

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang)Used to express disbelief: nonsense!; rubbish!

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

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…

See full 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.

Words you can make from codswallop

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