Visual Thesaurus | The Economist
Horsefeathers. Hogwash. Piffle. Flapdoodle. Baloney. Hooey. Hokum. Blarney. Twaddle. Poppycock. Applesauce. Tommyrot. Bushwa. You can drain your thesaurus for some time before exhausting the English language's many words for "nonsense."

And yet Vice President Biden chose the word "malarkey" to express his disagreement with U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan at Thursday night's debate.



With the word, Biden deposited something of a flaming bag of claptrap on the doorsteps of America's language bloggers. "The word malarkey, meaning 'insincere or exaggerated talk,' originally found favor in Irish-American usage, though its exact origin remains unknown," Ben Zimmer writes. He quotes Michael Quinion, who says, "we'll just have to settle for the unsatisfactory 'origin unknown.'" (more...)

The Atlantic Wire | Vanity Fair | NPR
Vice President Biden's aggressive use of "literally" in his speech to the Democratic National Convention Thursday night is the talk of the Internet Friday. How big is the topic? The Obama campaign literally bought the term on Twitter.

Jen Doll has written a cracking guide to what such "crutch words" say about their user. "As it were" is the drug of choice for "the most self-aware of crutch-word users." "Apparently" is "oft used by the blogger, because it's a way of getting out of a tricky situation." "Honestly": "The frequency with which you deploy this word is inversely related to the frequency with which you are actually honest."

A possible addition: "Alas," which is a sure sign you are a theater critic. (more...)