| Definitions | | codswallop |
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noun
- (context, UK, Australia, slang) senseless talk or writing; nonsense.
(WikiSaurus?-link, nonsense)
Etymology: Supposedly from w:Hiram Codd, Hiram Codd, a British manufacturer of soft drinks, who patented several designs for mineral water bottles in the 1870s + wallop, a beer drinker"s pejorative reference to soft drink.There is an absence of evidence supporting this. The suggestion is further discredited by early spellings of the term. http://oed.com/bbcwords/codswallop-new.html OED Online-BBC Balderdash and PiffleThere? is another possible source for this phrase coming from a connection to cod fishing. The long history of Cod Fishing in the North Atlantic as well as the earlier references to the phrase lends credence to its having an etimology dating back before the 1870's. The term wallop can mean the eggs (roe) of the fish, which in the case of the Cod fish was considered useless garbage as compared to the value of such items as caviar. This explaination gives an even closer etimological definition for the current use of the term as meaning somthing that is of little or no value.
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