ENGLISH LOVES A BIT OF NONSENSE

This summer I encountered a wordsearch puzzle, Wonderword, with the theme of “nonsense.” There I found many of my favorite “silly” words, all in some way a synonym for the word nonsense. Some originated in the United States, but many were born in the United Kingdom.

I have tried often to focus on how a non-native English speaker might react to the idiosyncrasies of this language. Our nonsense words must present them quite a hurdle. Even we native speakers trip over these, often archaic, words and have to seek out help.

But I love them for their very oddity. I will share just a few with you here, giving you the approximate date of their origin as I do. From the UK comes balderdash (1590 with modified used in 1670) and it is now the name of a board game. You will sometimes hear this word in old black and white films produced in England, usually spoken by an older gentleman. I never associate this word with meanness, only with bluster.

Tommyrot (1400 with modified use in 1848) is another from the UK. This is easy to associate with England as they called their WWI soldiers“Tommies.” Unlike balderdash, “tommyrot” carries, in my mind, more sneer.

Tomfoolery (Middle Ages) you might think is related in origin, but it is not. For some unknown reason, the English seem to like using “Tom” as a tag for several words. This word, however,  began with a theater character “Tom Fole” who was a clown or buffoon. Easy to see how a Tom Fole could morph into Tom Fool, then become a name for the behavior of that character, the clown/buffoon. This is my least favorite of the three I have just shared. In its favor, it is less condemning than tommyrot or balderdash.