Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
‘Bollocks’ in British slang means testicles, but also ‘nonsense’. Hence the pun in the Sex Pistols album title ‘Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols’. I’ve noticed quite a few internet usages of ‘that’s bullocks’, and at least a couple of ‘Never Mind The Bullocks’ references (ie here ).
‘bullock’ is the British word for a castrated bull. I think the US equivalent is ‘steer’.
I’m guessing that the confusion is at least partially influenced by the similarity of ‘bullshit’, which is used in much the same way. And that many of the people making the mistake are Americans who’ve heard it used but never seen it written, as in this review of a Radiohead documentary .
Does that qualify as an eggcorn? Or just a mispelling? I guess it depends what the people using it think that ‘bullocks’ means.
Harry
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I’ve just resurrected this old thread because HarryR’s post is precisely relevant to this quote which was posted yesterday on my local email bulletin board/chat-list: “The pressured idea seems to be that spiritual people give everything for free…Bullocks!”
“Bullocks!” for “Bollocks!” isn’t on the eggcorn list yet, but I think it should be, because the meaning connection is there (the association of “bullocks” with “bull”, “bullshit”). I assume that this eggcorn is much more common in the USA than in the UK, since the slang meaning of “bollocks” as hogwash, baloney, codswallop is commonly known in the UK, but not in the USA.
Dixon
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