Search Results for nonsense

Chortle

Meaning … kind. Playful and light in tone, it is one of the very few nonsense-poem coinages to become ordinary English vocabulary. Playful and light; usually describes delighted amusement rather than mockery. Regional…

Also known as chortled · chortler · chortles · chortling

Talk through your hat

Meaning … a subject one does not actually understand, producing nonsense or wild exaggeration. Informal and dismissive; the speaker is presumed to be bluffing rather than merely mistaken, and the idiom doubles as a…

Also known as talk through one's hat · talked through his hat · talking through your hat · you're talking through your hat

Kibosh

Meaning … fixed expression. An older British sense of kibosh meaning nonsense or twaddle survives only patchily. Informal and a bit jokey; nearly always inside 'put the kibosh on', with 'kybosh' the common British…

Also known as kybosh (usual British spelling) · kye-bosk (historical spelling)

A cock and bull story

Meaning … or excuse; an implausible tale. It implies the listener is not expected to believe it. Informal and dismissive; used to reject an account as nonsense or deliberate fabrication. Regional use: General English…

Also known as a tale of a cock and a bull · cock and bull tale · cock-and-bull story · that's a lot of cock and bull

All my eye and Betty Martin

Meaning Complete nonsense, especially a boast, excuse or claim that deserves no belief. Dated and playful. It is likely to puzzle readers unless the context clearly signals disbelief. Regional use: British English…

Also known as All my eye · My eye and Betty Martin

Lollygag

Origin … century, often first spelled lallygag. Early uses cover nonsense, idling, and amorous fooling around, with both the dawdling and courting senses present by the 1860s. Its deeper formation is uncertain: loll…

Also known as lally-gag · lallygag · lolly-gag

Go bananas

Origin … wild, playing on the monkey-and-banana association, and from 'banana oil', early-1900s slang for nonsense, but no source documents a decisive path, so the origin of the crazy sense is best stated as unknown…

Also known as bananas over something · be bananas · drive someone bananas · go totally bananas

Cold turkey

Origin … speech, where 'talking cold turkey' meant blunt, no-nonsense talk - an early print example is the Des Moines Daily News of May 1914 describing the evangelist Billy Sunday's preaching ('he talks cold turkey…

Also known as cold-turkey treatment · go cold turkey · quit cold turkey · talk cold turkey

There's no such thing as a free lunch

Meaning … and often shortened in business and political talk to a wry 'no free lunch'. Conversational to economic jargon; carries a worldly, no-nonsense tone. Regional use: General English; originated in American usage…

Also known as TANSTAAFL · There ain't no such thing as a free lunch · There is no free lunch · TINSTAAFL

When pigs fly

Origin … poem mocking fools. Possibly ties to circus oddities or hog tales, it reflects a rural wit that ballooned in Victorian jests-like 'pigs with wings' in cartoons-growing into a snappy put-down of nonsense…

Also known as Pigs fly