Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Zelo's Word-of-the-Week is: Bollocks!

"Bollocks" is a word of Anglo Saxon origin, meaning "testicles". The word is often used figuratively in English, as a noun to mean "nonsense" or conversely to mean "top quality" or "perfection", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, and an adjective to mean "poor quality" or "useless". The common phrases "Bollocks to that!" or "That's a load of old bollocks" expresses a distaste for a certain task, subject or opinion; "the dog's bollocks" expresses the opposite, namely admiration, pleasure or approval.

Perhaps the best-known use of the term is in the title of the 1977 punk rock album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Testimony in a resulting prosecution over the "obscene" term demonstrated that in Old English the word referred to a priest, and could also be used to mean "nonsense".

SOURCE: Wikipedia

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