Just to say that poppycock meaning 'nonsense' is still widespread in UK
English

In message <[log in to unmask]>, George Myers
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I have just last night came across the derivation of the root of this word. I
>was reading, finally, something I ordered last year from "Fatbrain, Inc."
>online, "Merde Excursions in Scientific, Cultural, and Socio-Historical
>Coprology" by Ralph A. Lewin, 1999. The word "poppycock" meaning in America,
>"nothing," derived from the Dutch, "pappekak" meaning "soft dung." Apparently
>the word may mean "soft coat" and maybe I might hypothesize, muskrat, four
>logically equal to one beaver? They both share the same habitat. I have
>trouble with the math, four bobcats = one beaver, considering the difficulty
>of catching bobcats. Maybe it is a "substitute" economy term, as was the case
>in the slave trade, according to Karl Polanyi, ("Primitive, Archaic and
>Modern Economies, Essays of Karl Polanyi," edited by George Dalton, 1968)
>silver and gold were reckoned on paper, but pig iron was transacted. Another
>might be a linguistic problem "muskrat, bobcat." The full quote is
>informative:
>
>"It seems a shame that the good name of bullshit, a potentially useful
>product, should have been debased in recent parlance to signify worthless or
>misleading statements. The use of the word "poppycock," which in American
>speech has much the same meaning, is considered more genteel, though it is
>derived from a comparable Dutch dialect expression, "pappekak," soft dung.
>(Packages of popcorn currently displayed in American supermarkets under this
>name are presumably prepared and sold by people unaware of its derivation.)"
>- page 5
>
>George J. Myers, Jr.
>
>That's not my final answer. Regis Philbin grew up around the corner from
>where I am, on Cruger Ave., near the "Bronx Zoo" across "Trojan Field." (You
>were either that or a Spartan.) I'm on Holland Ave., named after the English
>Mayor of NYC 1750-1758.

--
paul courtney