Bullshit (also bullcrap) is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism BS . In British English, bollocks is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is more common. It is a slang profanity term meaning nonsense , especially in a rebuking response to communication or actions viewed as deceiving , misleading, disingenuous, or false. As with many expletives, the term can be used as an interjection or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings . It can be used either as a noun or as a verb. While the word is generally used in a deprecating sense, it may imply a measure of respect for language skills, or frivolity, among various other benign usages. In philosophy, Harry Frankfurt , among others, analyzed the concept of bullshit as related to but distinct from lying. Outside of the philosophical and discursive studies, the everyday phrase bullshit conveys a measure of dissatisfaction with something or someone, but often does not describe any role of truth in the matter. Etymology Bull, meaning nonsense, dates from the 17th century, [1] while the term bullshit has been used as early as 1915 in American slang, [2] and came 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). [2] The term horseshit is a near synonym. The South African English equivalent is bull dust. Few corresponding terms exist in other languages; one prominent example, however, is German Bockmist , literally billy-goat shit. The earliest attestation mentioned by the Concise Oxford English 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 word bullshit does not appear in the text of the poem. Eliot did not publish this poem during his lifetime. [3] 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. [4] 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. Another theory, according to the lexicographer Eric Partridge, is that the term was popularised by the Australian and New Zealand troops from about 1916 arriving at the front during World War I. They were astonished at the British commanding officers emphasis on bull. Bull was the term for attention to appearances - spit and polish, making everything just so, even when it was a hindrance to waging war. The Diggers ridiculed the British by calling it not bull but bullshit. [5] In the philosophy of truth and rhetoric Assertions of fact Bullshit is commonly used to describe statements made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy, such as goal-oriented statements made in the field of politics or advertising. On one prominent occasion, the word itself was part of a controversial advertisement. During the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign , the Citizens Party candidate Barry Commoner ran a radio advertisement that began with an actor exclaiming: Bullshit! Carter , Reagan and Anderson, its all bullshit! NBC refused to run the advertisement because of its use of the expletive, but Commoners campaign successfully appealed to the Federal Communications Commission to allow the advertisement to run unedited. [6] Distinguished from lying 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 his essay on the subject, William G. Perry called bull[shit] relevancies, however relevant, without data and gave a definition of the verb to bull[shit] as follows: 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. Harry Frankfurts concept In his essay On Bullshit (originally written in 1986, and published as a monograph in 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: [8] 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. 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.[9] Cohen gives the example of Alan Sokals Transgressing the Boundaries as a piece of deliberate bullshit. Sokals aim in creating it, however, was to show 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. In everyday language Outside of the academic world, among natural speakers of North American English, as an interjection or adjective , bullshit conveys general displeasure, an objection to, or points to unfairness within, some state of affairs. In this 20th century colloquial usage, bullshit does not give a truth score to anothers discourse. It simply labels something that the speaker does not like and feels he is unable to change.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 14:36:25 +0000
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