WHy do English people make up these weird words, what ho??
2007-05-15 21:54:49 · 9 answers · asked by rambertram 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Poppycock... It's just like saying, "rubbish!" or "codswallop!"
Every culture makes up their own funny words for things... It makes life more interesting.
Another eg. "Tough bikkies".... means the same as "too bad, so sad"
(I'm Australian, but the way.)
2007-05-15 22:53:18 · answer #1 · answered by MumOf5 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It’s a fine-sounding expletive, but hardly heard on anybody’s lips these days, and with a dated feel. It seems eminently English: think of elderly ex-Indian-Army colonels in retirement in Tunbridge Wells exploding in wrath over some supposed mismanagement of the country’s affairs and writing disgusted letters to The Times about it. And most of the citations for it in the big Oxford English Dictionary are from British sources. But, as the OED reminds us, the word is actually American in origin, first turning up there about 1865. The OED is silent on its origin, but most modern dictionaries know well where it comes from: the Dutch word pappekak for soft faeces. The word was presumably taken to the USA by Dutch settlers; the scatological associations were lost when the word moved into the English-language community. The first half of the word is closely related to our pap for infants’ soft food; the second half is essentially the same as the old English cack for excrement; the verb form of this word is older than the noun, and has been recorded as far back as the fifteenth century. So there’s no link with the vulgar meaning of cock. Nor is it linked to the sense of cock for rubbish (as in phrases like that’s a load of old cock), as that’s a shortened form of cock and bull story, which comes from a fable concerning a bull and a cockerel.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pop1.htm
2007-05-16 05:30:51 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
senseless talk; nonsense; "talking rubbish"
"Oh he said the sky was spitting frogs at him, now that's just poppycock!"
2007-05-16 04:58:56 · answer #3 · answered by J S 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's not made up it's just an archaic word for balderdash and tommy rot.
2007-05-16 04:57:03 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
nonsense, bull-hooey
It's a cool word! That's why!
2007-05-16 04:57:13 · answer #5 · answered by Goddess of Grammar 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
And where did your dialect come from, exactly?
2007-05-16 05:13:39 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
a snack food made in nebraska.
2007-05-16 05:02:38 · answer #7 · answered by RW 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Apparently, it is the cock of a poppy.
2007-05-16 05:00:21 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
It is not really english.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pop1.htm
2007-05-16 04:59:24 · answer #9 · answered by U-98 6 · 2⤊ 1⤋