A young woman from Portland, Oregon, seeks a noun to denote something fake or otherwise dubious. She doesn’t want an obvious swear word, but also doesn’t like the ones she found in the thesaurus. She thinks malarkey, poppycock, and flim-flam sound too old-fashioned and unnatural for a twenty-something to say. Fraud, fake, hoax, janky, don’t sound quite right for her either. The hosts suggest chicanery, sham, rubbish, bogus, or crap. This is part of a complete episode.
You must log in to post a comment.
- Care Package (episode #1511) 11/12/2018: Sending someone a care package shows you care, of course. But the first care packages were boxes of food and personal items for survivors of... [more]
Ding-Ding Man (episode #1509) 10/29/2018: In 1803, a shy British pharmacist wrote a pamphlet that made him a reluctant celebrity. The reason? He proposed a revolutionary new system for classifying... [more]
Take Tea for the Fever (episode #1508) 10/22/2018: Silence comes in many forms. Writer Paul Goodman says there is, for example, the noisy silence of "resentment and self-recrimination," and the helpful, participatory silence... [more]
Sundog (episode #1507) 10/15/2018: A clever pun can make the difference between a so-so phrase and a memorable one. The phrase "the last straw" refers to an old fable... [more]
Oh, For Cute! (episode #1506) 10/08/2018: A stereotype is a preconceived notion about a person or group. Originally, though, the word stereotype referred to a printing device used to produce lots... [more]
I would suggest the work “bunk” (which is a shortened form of “bunkum”). To me, “bunk” sounds about 60-70 years old, while “bunkum” has the ring of 19th century language usage.
A quick follow-up to my recently posted response: a quick check with a standard thesaurus reveals these delicious mouthfuls: “balderdash”, “blather”, “codswallop”, “fiddle-faddle”, “hogwash”, “hokum”, “horsefeathers”, “humbug”, or “piffle”.