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BALONEY

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 10:55 pm
by Dr. Goodword

• baloney •

Pronunciation: bê-lo-ni • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, mass (no plural)

Meaning: 1. A variant US (mis)pronunciation of bologna, a mild, thick sausage made of mixed meats and meat by-products. 2. Bushwa, balderdash, blather, bunkum, claptrap, codswallop, crap, drivel, fiddle-faddle, flapdoodle, garbage, hogwash, hooey, hokum, horse feathers, horse pucky, humbug, malarkey, nonsense, piffle, poppycock, rubbish, tommy-rot, or common, everyday whang-doodle.

Notes: Today's Good Word is a US mispronunciation of bologna sausage "sausage from the city of Bologna". This mispronunciation became a word as soon as it took on the new meaning of "nonsense". It is another lexical orphan, a word with no derivational family.

In Play: As mentioned above, the basic sense of today's word is that of a large sausage, a slice of which fits nicely between two slices of bread: "Mom, I get so sick of baloney sandwiches day after day. Can't I take a salami sandwich to school one day?" The other sense of baloney takes its place among all the words meaning "nonsense" mentioned in the Meaning above: "I get so sick of all the baloney that comes out in election years—and I can't even make a sandwich out of it!"

Word History: If baloney is a mispronunciation of bologna that stuck, how did the meaning drift so far? Bologna had perhaps the mildest taste of all the sausages coming from Italy, it was the "blah" but thick sausage. It first picked up the meaning of "a thick head, a dolt": "The aristocratic Kid's first brawl for sugar was had in Sandusky, Odryo, with a boloney entitled Young Du Fresne," wrote H. C. Witwer in "The Leather Pushers" (Colliers Magazine, October 16, 1920). The current sense may have been an earlier coinage of legendary Variety staffer Jack Conway. It was popularized in the 1930s with its current sense by New York governor Alfred E. Smith, who loved to say, "No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney." A dinner is held in honor of Alfred E. Smith each election year with the candidates for president in attendance. (We are grateful to Albert Skiles for suggesting today's Good Word—and that's no baloney!)

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:36 am
by Philip Hudson
Baloney, the sausage, is too mild and blah for me. In my strict upbringing we were not allowed to say baloney for nonsense, as it was a "low" word to my mother's ears.

I Googled it but can not find a little ditty we sang when I was a child. I think it may have been a parody of "We have no Bananas" which I can find on Google. A phrase is: "We just killed a pony so we have some baloney but we have no bananas today." Does anyone have the words to this song?

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:02 am
by Slava
That one's out of my range. All I remember is:

Oscar Mayer makes the best
B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 9:00 am
by MTC
Election season baloney leaves us asking "Where's the beef?"

As for early twentieth century parodies of "Yes, we have no bannanas," the trail has gone cold...

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:36 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Anyone out there believe in precognition? Today's Dagwood comic strip talks about declaring a "boloney" day!

I also checked the pronunciation of bologna. For anyone interested, it seems to be ba-lon-ya. But I bet the Frech don't say it that way.

Philip, go to YouTube and enter "bologna song" in that search engine. The one with the pic of an island and one with an 18wheeler has an old gospel tune with each stanza ending with the word. Does not resemble the banana song, however.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:52 pm
by Philip Hudson
I found the baloney-pony verse on Mudcat. If you are into ancient and obscure music and lyrics Mudcat is the place to look.

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=515

5. YES! we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.
We just killed a pony,
So try our bologny.
It's flavored with oats and hay.
We have those New Hamp-SHY-re squashes.
They taste like go-LAH-shes,
But, YES! we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 5:26 pm
by LukeJavan8
We have a local radio station and it plays songs like this
periodically. Heaven knows where they get them? Mudcat?
Thanks for that link.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:58 am
by Audiendus
The Online Etymology Dictionary says that baloney is "perhaps influenced by blarney, but usually regarded as being from the sausage, as a type traditionally made from odds and ends".

Wiktionary, however, says of the "nonsense" sense: "From the Polari slang word balonie, which it says is "possibly from Irish". It gives balonie as the UK form of baloney (= nonsense), but that's baloney; we always spell it baloney.

Incidentally, the word Polari comes from the Italian parlare, to talk.

The French for Bologna (the Italian city, not the sausage) is Bologne. Not to be confused with Boulogne, in France.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 2:08 am
by Philip Hudson
Sure and the Irish have their blarney from Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone. It doesn't mean the same as baloney and I find it hard to find a connection. Blarney is really sort of nice, baloney is never nice, just like the sausage.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 7:07 am
by MTC
In one sense of the words "blarney" and "baloney" are synonymous according to The American Heritage Dictionary :

blar·ney (blärn)
n.
1. Smooth, flattering talk.
2. Deceptive nonsense.
[After the Blarney Stone in Blarney Castle, Blarney, Ireland.]

baloney
ba·lo·ney 2 also bo·lo·ney (b-ln) Slang
n.
Nonsense.
interj.
Used to express disagreement or exasperation.

[Alteration (influenced by baloney) of bullshit.]

Losing in dignity what he gained in accuracy, President Obama recently referred to comments by his opponent for office as "bullshit." Perhaps "baloney" would have been a more appetizing choice.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 12:04 pm
by LukeJavan8
When in County Cork, taking my mother on tour,
we reached the Blarney Castle, and I thought it would
be nice to go up and kiss the blarney stone. And I did
but my mother said she did not need to as she was
already full of it (she actually said that), and as well
was always known for her gift of gab. It was something
I'll never forget. People never mentioned I became
more "eloquent" in speech as a result of the kiss, however.

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 6:13 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Perhaps they were standing in awe? Dumbstruck?

Re: BALONEY

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:45 am
by LukeJavan8
Oh, Perry, you are loved, thank you so much.