Oct 10, 2024 By Nick Jacobs 4 min read

With the changing of the guard in Washington, D.C., on the near horizon, it seemed only fitting that I dedicate a little time to words that we will not be hearing very often after our current president retires to his home in Delaware. Seriously, this is not hyperbole.

No one definitively knows where the word malarkey originated, but most people believe it was a product of Ireland. Surprisingly, the closest Irish word to malarkey is mullachan which means “strong boy.” That makes no sense whatsoever in its present context. An alternative might be from the Greek word “malakai” which means worthlessness.

I prefer to explain it like this. So as not to use crude, unseemly, and potentially offensive words, the older generation sometimes went to extremes to show their respect for mixed company which often included children. Consequently, in my world, malarkey was a euphemism for bull caca or, in other words, it was a softer way of saying, “That’s a lie,” or “That’s ridiculous.” The truncated phrase “That’s a crock of @%^* ” was also used to express the malarkey sentiment.

One of my other all-time favorites was poppycock, which fits right in there with our malarkey definition. “Oh, that’s just poppycock.” Synonyms for poppycock were baloney, balderdash, blather, hogwash, and nonsense to name a few.

See how this works?

If mom suggested a solution to a problem and anyone expressed concern about her idea because they disagreed with one of the details, she would sarcastically say, “Oh, my, aren’t you persnickety?” In other words that meant, “You are too fussy,” or we might hear a more direct command in today’s vernacular leading to the same outcome with the phrase, “Get over it.”

When a kid was determined to be overconfident, you know, “too big for their britches,” the old fogies often would refer to them as “young whippersnappers.” That word has a much older derivation. It might have come from the 16th or 17th century when an unimportant person made noise. It might also have referred to a smart-aleck kid who had nothing better to do than stand around and snap a whip to hear the sound. That whip made lots of noise with no importance. Regardless, it was never a compliment to be a whippersnapper.

Another word that my mom loved was shenanigan. The word shenanigan referred negatively to secret or dishonest activities or maneuvers. “What kind of shenanigans are you up to now?” would have been a phrase mom would have used when my brother and I were whispering and giggling.

On the other side of that coin, if we were just killing time, she would accuse us of dawdling around by saying, “Why are you lollygagging?” No one quite knows the origins of the word lollygag, but it has been around since the mid-19th century. The more popular version of this word in today’s vernacular would be to vegetate.

This ole folks’ word list had fun references to things like a doohickey. Doohickey was often just a way of saying, “I have no idea or cannot remember what to call that thing.” Thingamajig was another one of those words. “I can not get the doohickey out of the thingamajig.”

Another great word is gobsmacked, which first appeared in 1956 along with such other famous words as barf, backlit, brinkmanship, and glitz. Gobsmacked means utterly astonished. It comes from the word mouth which is gob and smacked meaning hit.

If you are not a nincompoop, maybe you can try to put these words to good use and see if the result will be a room filled with flabbergasted people who will either get a kick out of it or ask you to skedaddle. I know this all seems like a lot of gobbledygook, but do not get all discombobulated, flummoxed, or into a kerfuffle.

And please do not make some big brouhaha out of this. They are just words.

Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.