Bollocks is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning “testicles.” The word is often used figuratively in British English, as a noun to mean “nonsense,” an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to mean “poor quality” or “useless.” Similarly, the common phrases “Bollocks to this!” or “That’s a load of old bollocks” generally indicate contempt for a certain task, subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also figures in idiomatic phrases such as “the dog’s bollocks” and “top bollock(s),” which usually refer to something which is admired, approved of or well-respected.
The word has a long and distinguished history, with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) giving examples of its usage dating back to the 13th century. One of the early references is John Wycliffe’s Bible (1382), Leviticus xxii, 24: “Al beeste, that … kitt and taken a wey the ballokes is, ye shulen not offre to the Lord…” (any beast that is cut and taken away the bollocks, you shall not offer to the Lord, i.e. castrated animals are not suitable as religious sacrifices)….
The Teutonic ball- in turn probably derives from the Proto-Indo-European base *bhel-, to inflate or swell. This base also forms the root of many other words, including “phallus.”
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, bollocks or ballocks was allegedly used as a slang term for a clergyman, although this meaning is not mentioned by the OED’s 1989 edition. For example, in 1864, the Commanding Officer of the Straits Fleet regularly referred to his chaplain as “Ballocks.” It has been suggested that bollocks came to have its modern meaning of “nonsense” because clergymen were notorious for talking nonsense during their sermons.
Ain’t that the truth.
In 1977, Professor James Kingsley, a famous linguistics professor at the University of Nottingham, had accredited the word to be used in the early eighteenth century with the Roman Catholic Church priests. His studies show that the actual word “bollocks” means either a priest, or “rubbish spoken by the priest.” Often, there were priests in the early eighteenth century who generally spoke rubbish, which is how the term “bollocks” became associated with verbal diarrhoea. The conviction came from the fact that Professor James Kingsley himself was a reverend and had been doing linguistic history research all his life….
“Ballock” is a variation of “bollock,” which was in everyday usage in the medieval period, albeit rarely heard today. The connection with “ball” in the sense of “testis” is evident.
Well, never mind the dog’s bollocks, then—here’s the Catholic clergy.
During the 1990s, a craze of shouting “bollocks!” swept through UK festivals, for example the Reading and Leeds festivals. Upon hearing someone shouting the word, the etiquette was to repeat the word as loudly as possible. The end result was seemingly spontaneous outbreaks of “bollocks!”-shouting spreading across the campsites. This may have begun at Isle of Wight Festival 1970.
Blimey.
