Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Nonsense.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To jumble and adulterate (liquors); hence, to mix with inferior ingredients; adulterate: with with before the adulterant: as, to balderdash wine with cider.
  • noun A jumbled mixture of frothy liquors.
  • noun Senseless prate; an unmeaning or nonsensical jumble of words; trashy talk or writing.
  • noun Synonyms See prattle, n.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To mix or adulterate, as liquors.
  • noun A worthless mixture, especially of liquors.
  • noun Senseless jargon; ribaldry; nonsense; trash.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun senseless talk or writing; nonsense.
  • verb To mix or adulterate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun trivial nonsense

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Possibly alteration of Medieval Latin balductum, posset.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Unknown, possibly from the early English drink of wine mixed with beer or water or other substances that was sold cheaply.

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Examples

  • (I like that, and the word balderdash, and the ultimate insult ... cum bubble)

    jenna-bear Diary Entry jenna-bear 2002

  • If I’ve been focusing on the latter in all the recent blather, by the way, it’s because I think the “you’re just a jealous poopy-head” balderdash is largely obvious and acknowledged, while the “meh, that’s so jejune” piffle is not.

    Critique From HereNow Hal Duncan 2009

  • If I’ve been focusing on the latter in all the recent blather, by the way, it’s because I think the “you’re just a jealous poopy-head” balderdash is largely obvious and acknowledged, while the “meh, that’s so jejune” piffle is not.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • I say, if that is the function, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling out your orange-skin again; and save an incalculable labor, and an emission of nonsense and falsity, and electioneering beer and bribery and balderdash, which is terrible to think of, in deciding.

    Latter-Day Pamphlets Thomas Carlyle 1838

  • And I almost repeated balderdash, which is sure to lose me the hurried hairless vote.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XVIII No 1 1991

  • Stableford describes the argument set out in the book as "balderdash" and notes that Hartwell invited him to write this review despite knowing that he would probably be of this opinion.

    The Smaller The Stakes, The Bigger The Cowards 2006

  • It was "balderdash" that the amnesty impeded the work of the attorney-general, which should use criminal law to carry out their work, he said.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1996

  • However, it was "balderdash" to say that a state of chaos existed.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1995

  • This "balderdash," as Gardner calls it, seem to be one of Gardner's own more recent fantasies.

    Velikovsky's Deluge Rose, Lynn E. 1980

  • In other words, the book was the most unbridled kind of balderdash, founded on my callow recollections of the Green Chalybeate, -- not the least bit accurate, as I was afterward to discover, -- with all the good people exceedingly oratorical and the bad ones singularly epigrammatic and abandoned and obtuse.

    The Cords of Vanity A Comedy of Shirking James Branch Cabell 1918

Comments

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  • Especially when you blurt it out all raspy and old-man-like.

    December 6, 2006

  • For me, with flapping cheeks while quickly shaking your head from side to side.

    December 6, 2006

  • Scrooge-ish

    January 25, 2007

  • A rapidly receding hairline. --Mensa word list winner 2006

    March 2, 2007

  • hust like my dad........

    BYE-BYE HAIR!

    July 19, 2008

  • There was a lot about the obsolete use of the word referring to a mixture of liquors. The most often use is in writings of the 16th - 18th century meaning: senseless, stupid or exaggerated talk or writing; nonsense.

    The music was lovely, but the sermon was balderdash.

    June 14, 2009

  • Wow! Balderdash is featuring on 100 (hundred) lists! Could be the most popular English word of all times?

    May 27, 2012

  • From the Dictionary of the Sussex dialect

    " BALDERDASH Probably derived from Ang Sax Baldwyrda a saucy jester Obscene conversation "

    October 25, 2013