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Bullshit (often abbreviated BS), also Bullcrap, is a common English expletive. It can also be shortened to just "Bull". Rabbit feces are usually 0. ... This article is about the card game. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The word expletive is currently used in three senses: syntactic expletives, expletive attributives, and bad language. The word expletive comes from the Latin verb explere, meaning to fill, via expletivus, filling out. It was introduced into English in the seventeenth century to refer to various kinds of padding — the padding...

Most commonly, it describes tautological, incorrect, misleading, or false language and statements. Literally, it describes the faeces of a bull. As with many expletives, it can be used as an interjection (or in many other parts of speech) and can carry a wide variety of meanings. In rhetoric, a tautology is an unnecessary (and usually unintentional) repetition of meaning, often utilising words from different languages. ... Rabbit feces are usually 0. ... For general information about the genus, including other species of cattle, see Bos. ... An interjection is a part of speech that usually has no grammatical connection with the rest of the sentence and simply expresses emotion on the part of the speaker, although most interjections have clear definitions. ... In grammar, a part of speech or word class is defined as the role that a word (or sometimes a phrase) plays in a sentence. ... In linguistics, meaning is the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating through language. ...

Bullshitting is usually used to describe statements that are false, or made-up. Usually people describe other people's action of making a lot of statements as bullshitting in arguments, when one is making up rules or making examples that are not anything to do with what they are discussing or when one is making statements by using examples that need different rules to be applied, so this person is bullshitting

As it contains the word "shit", the term is usually considered foul language, hence the use of the euphemistic abbreviations "bull" and "BS". Nonetheless, the term is prevalent in American English and, as with many words, the term is used in a variety of countries, some dating back to approximately the same era World War I. In British English, bollocks is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is now a commonly used expletive in British English also. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... In cartoons, profanity is often depicted by substituting symbols for words, as a form of non-specific censorship. ... A euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener;[1] or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ... For other uses, see American English (disambiguation). ... British English (BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere in the Anglophone world. ... Bollox redirects here. ...

While bullshit can be used in a deprecating sense, the term 'bullshit artist' may imply a measure of respect for the skill required to "bullshit" effectively.

In popular explanations of philosophy, the word bullshit is used to denote utterances and speech acts which does not add to the meaning of the set of sentences uttered, but which is added purely to persuade interlocutors of the validity or importance of other utterances. The accuracy of the information is irrelevant whilst "bullshitting"; whether true or false, "bullshit" is the intention to distort the information or to otherwise achieve a desirable outcome, making "bullshit" a close cousin to rhetoric as Plato conceived it. The philosophical use of the term was first systematically described by Harry Frankfurt (see below), but has been used longer than that, for instance by proponents of Analytical Marxism. For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by silence. ... The notion speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. ... For other uses, see Persuasion (disambiguation). ... An interlocutor (pronounced in-ter-lock-you-ter) describes someone who informally explains the views of a government and also can relay messages back to a government. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. ... Analytical Marxism refers to a style of thinking about Marxism that was prominent amongst English-speaking philosophers and social scientists during the 1980s. ...

Etymology

"Bull", meaning nonsense, dates from the 17th century (Concise Oxford Dictionary), whereas the term "bullshit" is popularly considered to have been first used in 1915, in American slang, and to have come into popular usage only during World War II. The word "bull" itself may have derived from the Old French boul meaning "fraud, deceit" (Oxford English Dictionary). The term "horseshit" is a near synonym. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300. ...

The earliest attestation mentioned by the Concise Oxford Dictionary is in fact T. S. Eliot, who between 1910 and 1916 wrote an early poem to which he gave the title The Triumph of Bullshit, written in the form of a ballade. The first stanza goes: For other persons named Thomas Eliot, see Thomas Eliot (disambiguation). ... The ballade was a verse form consisting of three (sometimes five) stanzas, each with the same metre, rhyme scheme and last line, with a shorter concluding stanza (an envoi). ...

Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

The word bullshit does not appear in the text of the poem, though in keeping with the ballade form, the refrain "For Christ's sake stick it up your ass" appears in each following verse and concludes the envoi. Eliot did not publish this poem during his lifetime. ^[1] A refrain (from the Old French refraindre to repeat, likely from Vulgar Latin refringere) is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the chorus of a song. ...

As to earlier etymology the OED cites bull with the meaning "trivial, insincere, untruthful talk or writing, nonsense". It describes this usage as being of unknown origin, but notes the following: "OF boul, boule, bole fraud, deceit, trickery; mod. Icel bull ‘nonsense’; also ME bull BUL ‘falsehood’, and BULL verb, to befool, mock, cheat." ^[2] The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most successful dictionary of the English language, (not to be confused with the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English, formerly New Oxford Dictionary of English, of... Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300. ... Icelandic ( ) is a North Germanic language, the official language of Iceland and the mother tongue of the Icelandic people. ... Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the...

Although as the above makes clear there is no confirmed etymological connection it might be noted that these older meanings are synonymous with the modern expression "Bull" otherwise generally considered (and intentionally used as) a contraction of "Bullshit". Bullshit is often considered a vulgar word, and in the U.S. and New Zealand, it must be censored from over-the-air radio broadcasts.

Uses of "bullshit"

Bullshit is commonly used to describe what often occurs in situations where truth and accuracy are far less important than the ability to achieve a suitable response in the audience, often needed in politics, religion or advertising).. In many cases, such a response helps to gain popularity or favor. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... For other uses, see Politics (disambiguation). ... // Advert redirects here. ...

All skewed, spinned, knowingly dubious, carefully framed, pretentious, misleading or vacuous statements are referred to as "bullshit". Examples of "bullshit" can include sales/marketing pitches, public relations releases, and demagogic or disingenuous pronouncements made by politicians. More mundane examples of the word's use often involve the lives of ordinary people. For example, it is not at all uncommon to hear of people "bullshitting" a job interview, or attributing their performance in an examination to their ability to "bullshit". In this sense, "bullshitting" walks the line between extemporaneous speaking and lying outright. It is also common for people to "bullshit" friends or acquaintances, by spinning an elaborate tall tale (also known as "jiving"). The object here is to make the bullshittees look foolish by dint of their gullibility in accepting the bullshit as fact. "Bullshit" does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication; with only basic knowledge about a topic, bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions. It may also merely be "filler" or nonsense that, by virtue of its style or wording, gives the impression that it actually means something. (In critiques of propaganda, this "technique" is known as the argumentum ex stercore tauri, which literally means "appealing to the manure of bulls".) In his essay on the subject (see Further reading), William G. Perry called bull[shit] "relevancies, however relevant, without data" and gave a definition of the verb "to bull[shit]" as follows: This article is about work. ... To examine somebody or something is to inspect it closely, hence an examination is a detailed inspection or analysis of an object or person. ... Statues of tall tale characters Paul Bunyan and Babe A tall tale is a story that claims to explain the reason for some natural phenomenon, or sometimes illustrates how skilled/intelligent/powerful the subject of the tale was. ... For other uses, see Propaganda (disambiguation). ... Horseshit redirects here. ...

To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content.

The "bullshitter" generally either knows the statements are likely false, exaggerated, and in other ways misleading or has no interest in their factual accuracy one way or the other. "Talking bullshit" is thus a lesser form of lying, and is likely to elicit a correspondingly weaker emotional response: whereas an obvious liar may be greeted with derision, outrage, or anger, an exponent of bullshit tends to be dismissed with an indifferent sneer. This article is about untruthfulness. ... For other uses, see Emotion (disambiguation). ... This article is about untruthfulness. ... This article is about the emotion. ...

Sometimes called "shooting the shit" or "shooting the bull", bullshit can also be the act of having a very casual conversation with little value. A lot of times, people will say "that's bullshit" when something bad or unexpected happens, as in "No way!" or "You're kidding".

Bullshit is also used in the popular saying "money talks, bullshit walks" meaning that people who "do something" such as "put their money on the table" will get more results than people who merely talk. Making this statement indicates that the talking up to this time has been bullshit and that it is now time to do something or the speaker will walk away from the proposed deal. Look up saying in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Bullshit can also refer to excessively complex, unreasonable, or burdensome requirements demanded of an individual or organization by another, especially by government agencies or other bureaucracies. For example, a contractor wishing to bid on a government job may refer to the paperwork required to do so as "government bullshit."

The word "horseshit" is often used in vulgar slang as a synonym for "bullshit" to refer to nonsense. The usage of "horseshit" (a less common term) differs slightly from "bullshit". People may refer to their own statements and presentations as "bullshit", as in the traditional folk saying, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit". "Horseshit" is more often used as a reactive exclamation or profoundly distrustful assessment. For other uses, see Nonsense (disambiguation). ... Look up proverb in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Bullshit can also be a noun. e.g. "Don't give me that bullshit." The common expression "Don't give me that" probably arose as a euphemistic shortening.

"Bullshit" implies dubious credibility with an understood lack of true malevolence, whereas "horseshit" suggests uncompromised ignorance or deception. "Horseshit" carries with it a certain connotation of indignation; stating that something is a "load of horseshit" usually implies that the speaker feels somehow cheated or wronged by the current situation, whereas calling something "bullshit" can imply anything from indignation to a joking and good-natured intent.

(There are several non-vulgar words nearly equivalent with bullshit - such as: "baloney", "prevarication" and "embellishment" that may be used on more formal occasions. There are also many Irish slang equivalents, including blarney, malarkey, balderdash, and tommyrot.)

Furthermore, the exclamation "Bullshit!" can also be used to express surprise, shock and/or humour at a truthful tale - often because the end result of the story or incident is of such fortune that if you didn't know any better you'd instantly assume the tale to be fictional. The statement of "Bullshit!" in this context is more likely followed up by a question (such as "Are you serious?"), or combined in a question (eg. "No way! Are you bullshitting me?"), which serves the purpose of asking the person telling the story to reconfirm the truthfulness of the tale.

It can also be used to describe two people who are "bullshitting" otherwise just having a small conversation about nothing. It can also be known as shooting the bull.

"Bullshit" in philosophy

In his essay On Bullshit (written in 1986 but not published until 2005), philosopher Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University characterizes bullshit as a form of falsehood distinct from lying. The liar, Frankfurt holds, knows and cares about the truth, but deliberately sets out to mislead instead of telling the truth. The "bullshitter", on the other hand, does not care about the truth and is only seeking to impress: [1] [2] On Bullshit is an essay by philosopher Harry Frankfurt. ... Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ...

Frankfurt connects this analysis of bullshit with Ludwig Wittgenstein's disdain of "non-sense" talk, and with the popular concept of a "bull session" in which speakers may try out unusual views without commitment. He fixes the blame for the prevalence of "bullshit" in modern society upon anti-realism and upon the growing frequency of situations in which people are expected to speak or have opinions without appropriate knowledge of the subject matter. Wittgenstein redirects here. ... In philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe any position involving either the denial of the objective reality of entities of a certain type or the insistence that we should be agnostic about their real existence. ...

Gerald Cohen, in "Deeper into Bullshit", contrasted the kind of "bullshit" Frankfurt describes with a different sort: nonsense discourse presented as sense. Cohen points out that this sort of bullshit can be produced either accidentally or deliberately. While some writers do deliberately produce bullshit, a person can also aim at sense and produce nonsense by mistake; or a person deceived by a piece of bullshit can repeat it innocently, without intent to deceive others. ^[3] Gerald Allan Jerry Cohen, (born 1941) is the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford. ...

Cohen gives the example of Alan Sokal's "Transgressing the Boundaries" as a piece of deliberate bullshit. Sokal's aim in creating it, however, was to point out that the "postmodernist" editors who accepted his paper for publication could not distinguish nonsense from sense, and thereby by implication that their field was "bullshit". Alan David Sokal (born 1955) is a physicist at New York University. ... The Sokal affair was a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editorial staff and readership of the postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University). ...

Euphemisms

"Bullshit" has a number of euphemisms: A euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener;[1] or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ...

• BS
• bull
• bull butter (alluding to something that would be as absurd as a bull producing milk/butter)
• bullcrap
• bullish (used under stock market trends)
• bullplop
• bullroar (especially when intimidation is involved)
• bullpucky
• bullshark
• bullhonkery
• bovine scat (retaining the initials)
• bovine stercus
• horsefeathers
• horse hockey
• poppycock (simply a translation of the phrase into Dutch, although an actual Dutchman would spell it pappe-kak)

Further reading

• Penny, Laura (2005). Your Call Is Important To Us: The Truth About Bullshit. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-8103-3.  — Halifax academic Laura Penny's study of the phenomenon of bullshit and its impact on modern society.
• Frankfurt, Harry G. (2005). On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12294-6.  — Harry Frankfurt's detailed analysis of the concept of bullshit.
• Perry, William G. (1967). Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts. Originally published in Harvard College: A Collection of Essays by Members of the Harvard Faculty.
• Holt, Jim, Say Anything, one of his Critic At Large essays from The New Yorker, (August 22, 2005)
• Eliot, T. S. Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 (Harcourt, 1997) ISBN 0-151002-74-6
• Royston, Chris. My Life - No Bullshit, I Actually Do Get Blank Cheques (Royston Publishers 2007)

Laura Penny Laura Penny is the author of Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit, a study of the phenomenon of bullshit and its role in modern society. ... Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. ... For other uses, see New Yorker. ... is the 234th day of the year (235th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Bullshit

• Buffalo chip (nik-nik)
• Cow dung
• Bollocks
• Gobbledygook
• Gibberish
• Humbug
• Fisk
• Nonsense
• Tall tale
• Bullshit (game)
• Bullshit (drinking game)
• Pseudointellectualism
• Propaganda
• Fiction
• Lie
• Perverb
• bunkum
• Spin (public relations)
• Truthiness
• Tim Shadbolt - New Zealand politician arrested for using the word, later wrote an autobiography titled "Bullshit and Jellybeans"

Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Wikiquote is one of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, running on MediaWiki software. ... A buffalo chip, also called a meadow muffin, is the name for a large, flat, dried piece of dung deposited by the buffalo from the large amount of grass that it eats. ... Fresh cow dung Cow dung being dried for fuel in India. ... Bollox redirects here. ... Gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes shortened to gobbledegoo) is an English term used to describe nonsensical language, sound that resembles language but has no meaning, or unintelligible encrypted text. ... For the language game, see Gibberish (language game). ... Look up humbug in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Fisk can mean: jag börja med jackt fiske 1970 och jag har forsatt emilm malm är en jobbig jävla bögg han bor i lambohov om någon vill kontakta honnpom s a verb, to fisk means to criticise an essay or argument in extreme detail, named after... For other uses, see Nonsense (disambiguation). ... Statues of tall tale characters Paul Bunyan and Babe A tall tale is a story that claims to explain the reason for some natural phenomenon, or sometimes illustrates how skilled/intelligent/powerful the subject of the tale was. ... This article is about the card game. ... Bullshit, also known as who shit? and somebody shit in the parlor, is a drinking game that requires a minimum of four players. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... For other uses, see Propaganda (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Fiction (disambiguation). ... This article is about untruthfulness. ... A perverb (contraction of perverse proverb) is a sentence that starts out like a well-known proverb or other expression, but ends in such an unexpected way that the listener is forced to back up and re-parse several words in order to get its sense. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Stephen Colbert announces that The Wørd of the night is truthiness, during the premiere episode of The Colbert Report. ... Tim Shadbolt - Mayor of Invercargill Timothy Richard Shadbolt (born February 19, 1947) is the mayor of the city of Invercargill, New Zealand, and former mayor of Waitemata City. ...

References

1. ^ Eliot, T. S. Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 (Harcourt, 1997) ISBN 0-151002-74-6
2. ^ Penn.edu
3. ^ Cohen, G. A., "Deeper into Bullshit". Originally appeared in Buss and Overton, eds., Contours of Agency: Themes from the Philosophy of Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002). Reprinted in Hardcastle and Reich, Bullshit and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2006), ISBN 0-8126-9611-5.

External links

• Ten minute video interview with Harry Frankfurt
• How to detect bullshit