Gotta say, I love the word “balderdash.” (Though I have a hard time ‘hearing’ the word without imagining a top-hatted English gentleman huffing it in an upper-crust accent, LOL.) And it has a long history with the English language. =)
Balderdash came into English round about the 1590s, though its origins are misty. Originally it was the name of a drink–a mixture of liquors like milk and beer or beer and wine (eww). It was in the 1670s that it got applied to a senseless jumble of words.
Looking at its parts, it appears that the “balder” is from the Danish word that means “noise, rumble” and the “dash” is from the Scandinavian word, which originally carried the meaning like in dash to pieces. It gained the “move quickly” meaning in the 1300s. So combined, you can see where “balderdash” would come to mean things combined in a noisy, careless fashion.
And of course, now it’s a very fun word game. 😉
I hope everyone has a great week!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
This is such a fun word. I have never heard of it before or the game either.
Thank you!