malarkey

It's a great word, isn't it? It applies to so many situations. Think of the sentence, "Enough of your malarkey". You can substitute 'nonsense' or 'bullshit' or probably half a dozen others, but none of them strikes quite the same tone of playful correction.

So what is malarkey? Where does it come from? Let's find out. I'm going to guess it's Irish, but that's only because I can imagine my Irish-American grandmother using it.

***

Well, I'm drawing a blank on this one. It seems to have come out of America in the 1920s, at least that's the first it appeared in print. But no one is going to stake a claim on where it comes from. It looks like it might well come from someone's name, but no one seems to know who the nonsense spinning Malarkey might have been. I'm disappointed. It is still such a prevalent word here that I actually heard it used on television as I was typing this, I think by a Republican ridiculing the efforts of Wisconsin protesters.

It's a great word, regardless, and obviously non-partisan.