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Bullcrap


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. It is mostly a slang profanity term meaning "nonsense", especially as a rebuke in response to communication or actions viewed as deceptive, misleading, disingenuous, unfair 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. A person who communicates nonsense on a given subject may be referred to as a "bullshit artist".

While the word is generally used in a deprecatory 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.

As an exclamation, "Bullshit!" conveys a measure of dissatisfaction with something or someone, but this usage need not be a comment on the truth of the matter.

"Bull", meaning nonsense, dates from the 17th century, while the term "bullshit" has been used as early as 1915 in British and Americanslang, and came into popular usage only during World War II. The word "bull" itself may have derived from the Old French bole meaning "fraud, deceit". The term "horseshit" is a near synonym. An occasionally used South African English equivalent is "bull dust".

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, and Eliot himself never published the poem.


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