poppycock
/ˈpɒpɪkɒk
/noun [mass noun] informal
Nonsense: he said I was talking poppycock...
- ‘It was all absolute nonsense, complete poppycock,’ said Lennon.
- And all this talk of it being a man's world is pure balderdash, poppycock and gibberish.
- It should have been called nonsense and poppycock, but it was tempting to believe it as prices just kept rocketing.
Synonyms
nonsense, rubbish, garbage, claptrap, balderdash, blather, blether, moonshine;
foolishness, silliness
informal rot, tripe, hogwash, baloney, drivel, bilge, bosh, bull, bunk, guff, eyewash, piffle, phooey, hooey, malarkey, twaddle, dribble
British informal cobblers, codswallop, stuff and nonsense, tosh, cack
Scottish & Northern English informal havers
North American informal flapdoodle, blathers, applesauce, wack, bushwa
North American vulgar slang crapola
informal, dated bunkum, tommyrot, cod, gammon, toffee
Origin
Mid 19th century: from Dutch dialect pappekak, from pap 'soft' + kak 'dung'.
The English language has any number of curious words for ‘nonsense’, such as balderdash (late 16th century) of unknown origins, and codswallop, claptrap—first used in the modern sense by Lord Byron, and piffle (mid 19th century) from the sound. Poppycock was originally Dutch, and comes from pappekak, which meant either ‘soft dung’ or ‘doll's excrement’ Another such term is bosh, a Turkish word meaning ‘empty, worthless’ which was popularized by its frequent use in James Morier's highly successful 1834 novel Ayesha, the Maid of Kar.