Words of One Syllable Department
In the
NYT of 18 November,
Sam Roberts wrote about "Mailer's Nonfiction Legacy: His 1969 Race for
Mayor", saying that
Even his three-word campaign slogan --
a vulgarization of "No More Bull" -- was unprintable.
(Hat tip to Barry Popik, in ADS-L yesterday.) As Mark Mandel
remarked, that's really getting it backwards. Whatever the
history of
bull 'trivial,
insincere, or untruthful talk or writing; nonsense' (
OED) and
bullshit 'rubbish, nonsense' (
OED again) -- this isn't entirely
clear -- there's no doubt that in the popular view most occurrences of
the former are seen as euphemisms for the latter, rather than the
latter being seen as a vulgarization of the former.
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at November 25, 2007 01:51 PM