Bollocks () is a word of Middle English origin meaning "testicles". The word is often used in British English and Hiberno-English in a multitude of negative ways; it most commonly appears as a noun meaning "rubbish" or "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to describe something that is of poor quality or useless. It is also used in common phrases like "bollocks to this", which is said when quitting a task or job that is too difficult or negative, and "that's a load of old bollocks", which generally indicates contempt for a certain subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also appears in positive phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" or more simply "the bollocks", which will refer to something which is admired or well-respected.
Etymology
The
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives examples of its usage dating back to the 13th century. One of the early references is Wycliffe's Bible (1382),
Leviticus xxii, 24: "Al beeste, that ... kitt and taken awey the
ballokes is, ye shulen not offre to the Lord ..." (any beast that is cut and taken away the
bollocks, you shall not offer to the Lord, i.e.
castration animals are not suitable as sacrifices).
The OED states (with abbreviations expanded): "Probably a derivative of Proto-Germanic ball-, of which the Old English representative would be inferred as beall-u, -a, or -e". The Teutonic ball- in turn probably derives from the Proto-Indo-European base *bhel-, to inflate or swell. This base also forms the root of many other words, including "phallus".
Meaning "nonsense"
From the 17th to the 19th century,
bollocks or
ballocks was allegedly used as a
slang term for a clergyman, although this meaning is not mentioned by the
OEDs 1989 edition. For example, in 1684, the Commanding Officer of the Straits Fleet regularly referred to his chaplain as "
Ballocks".
It has been suggested that
bollocks came to have its modern meaning of "
nonsense" because some clergymen were notorious for talking nonsense during their sermons.
Severity
Originally, the word "bollocks" was the everyday
vernacular word for testicles—as noted above, it was used in this sense in the first English-language Bible, in the 14th century. By the mid-17th century, at least, it had begun to acquire coarse figurative meanings (see ), for example in a translation of works by
Rabelais.
It did not appear in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary of the English language.[* Downloadable copy of Johnson's Dictionary, 6th Edition, Volume 1 and Volume 2 at the Internet Archive] It was also omitted from the 1933 Oxford English Dictionary and its 1941 reprint, finally appearing in the 1972 supplement.[Melvin J. Lasky: The language of journalism: Profanity, obscenity and the media, Aldine Transaction, 2007. , . p.134] The first modern English dictionary to include an entry for "bollocks" was G. N. Garmonsway's Penguin English Dictionary of 1965.
The relative severity of the various profanity, as perceived by the British public, was studied on behalf of the Ofcom, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority. The results of this jointly commissioned research were published in December 2000 in a paper called "Delete Expletives?".[ ASA Reports and Surveys , Delete Expletives paper. Retrieved 19 March 2010.] This placed "bollocks" in eighth position in terms of its perceived severity, between "prick" (seventh place) and "Asshole" (ninth place).[ Delete Expletives, p.9] By comparison, the word "balls" (which has some similar meanings) was down in 22nd place. Of the people surveyed, 25% thought that "bollocks" should not be broadcast at all, and only 11% thought that it could acceptably be broadcast at times before the national 9 pm "watershed" on television (radio does not have a watershed).[ Delete Expletives, p.28] 25% of the people regarded "bollocks" as "very severe", 32% "quite severe", 34% "mild" and 8% considered it "not swearing".[ Delete Expletives, p.12]
A survey of the language of London teenagers (published in 2002) examined, amongst other things, the incidence of various swearwords in their speech. It noted that the top ten swearwords make up 81% of the total swearwords. "Bollocks" was the seventh most frequent swearword, after "fucking", "shit", "fuck", "bloody", "hell" and "fuck off". Below "bollocks" were "bastard", "bitch" and "damn", in eighth, ninth and tenth places.[Anna-Brita Stenström, Gisle Andersen and Ingrid Kristine Hasund: Trends in teenage talk: corpus compilation, analysis, and findings, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002. , . p.80] This research regarded these words as swearwords in the context of their usage but observed that some might be inoffensive in other contexts.[Stenström, Andersen and Hasund, p.76]
Some campaigners, particularly the Liberal Democrats, hoping to stop the UK's departure from the European Union adopted the slogan, "Bollocks to Brexit". When queried about the propriety of the use of this term in Parliament in January 2019, the Speaker of the House, John Bercow ruled that the use of the word in Parliamentary speech was "not disorderly".
Negative uses
"Talking bollocks" and "bollockspeak"
"Talking
bollocks" generally means talking nonsense or
bullshit,
[R Lingo, Talking Bollocks!: Totally Stupid Everyday Remarks, Crombie Jardine Publishing Limited, 2008., ] for example: "Don't listen to him, he's talking
bollocks", or "talking absolute
bollocks". Another example is "I told Maurice that he was talking bollocks, that he was full of shit and that his opinions were a pile of piss. (Rhetoric was always my indulgence.)"
[Robert McLiam Wilson, Ripley Bogle, Arcade Publishing, 1998, , ] "Talking
bollocks" in a corporate context is referred to as
bollockspeak.
[Tony J. Watson, Organising and managing work: organisational, managerial and strategic behaviour in theory and practice (2nd edition), Pearson Education, 2006, , 9780273704805. p.231: "I call a cock up a cock up and not a "contingent operating difficulty which pompous bollock-speak."] Bollockspeak tends to be
buzzword-laden and largely content-free, like
gobbledygook: "Rupert, we'll have to leverage our synergies to facilitate a
paradigm shift by Q4" is an example of management
bollockspeak. There is a whole parodic book entitled
The Little Book of Management Bollocks.
[Alistair Beaton 2001 ] When a great deal of bollocks is being spoken, it may be said that the 'bollocks quotient' is high.
[John Pilger, 'The politics of bollocks', New Statesman 5 February 2009 [4]]
A "bollocks" (singular noun)
Comparable to
cock-up,
screw-up,
balls-up,
fuck-up etc. Used with the indefinite article, it means a disaster, a mess or a
failure. It is often used pejoratively, as in to have "made a
bollocks out of it",
[Henry Friedman, Sander Meredeen, The dynamics of industrial conflict: lessons from Ford, Taylor & Francis, 1980, , 9780709903741, p.104: "Birch had admitted to Rees that the Union had 'made a bollocks of it' by confusing the grading and equal pay issues in court."] and it is generally used throughout
Great Britain and
Ireland.
Bollocks up (transitive verb)
To bollocks something up means "to mess something up". It refers to a botched job: "Well, you
bollocksed it up that time, Your Majesty!" or "
Bollocksed up at work again, I fear. Millions down the drain".
To "drop a bollock"
To "drop a bollock" describes the malfunction of an operation, or messing something up, as in many sports, and in more polite business parlance,
dropping the ball brings play to an unscheduled halt.
[ "Guy Ritchie ... was about to drop a bollock from a mile high. His next project in 2003 was Swept Away, a film so harshly derided by critics that it actually made the reader feel sympathy for the poor guy – that is, until they saw it for themselves."]
Bollocking
Noun
A
"bollocking" usually denotes a robust verbal chastisement for something which one has done (or not done, as the case may be), for instance: "I didn't do my homework and got a right
bollocking off Mr Smith", or "A nurse was assisting at an appendix operation when she shouldn't have been ... and the surgeon got a
bollocking".
Actively, one
gives or
delivers a bollocking to someone; in the building trade one can 'throw a right bollocking into' someone.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest meaning as "to slander or defame" and suggests that it entered the English language from the 1653 translation of one of Rabelais' works, which includes the Middle French expression "en couilletant", translated as "ballocking". The earliest printed use in the sense of a severe reprimand is, according to the OED, from 1946.[ Oxford English Dictionary, online edition. Entry for "bollocking"]
Adjective
Bollocking can also be used as a reinforcing adjective: "He hasn't a
bollocking clue!" or "Where's me
bollocking car?"
"A kick in the bollocks"
"A kick in the bollocks" is used to describe a significant setback or disappointment, e.g. "I was diagnosed with having skin cancer. Ye Gods! What a kick in the bollocks".
[Roger Stutter, Jonny Kennedy: The Story of the Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, Tonto Books, 2007, , . p.158]
"Freeze (or work) one's bollocks off"
To freeze one's bollocks off means to be very cold. To "work one's bollocks off" is to work very hard. This phrase is also sometimes used by or about women:
Boy George referred to his mother "working her bollocks off" at home.
[Deborah Ross, "Boy George: Drama chameleon", The Independent, 13 May 2002]
"Bollock naked"
"
Bollock naked" is used in the singular form to emphasise being completely nude: "he was completely pissed and stark
bollock naked".
Bollocks (singular noun)
In Ireland,
"bollocks",
"ballocks" or
"bollox" can be used as a singular noun to mean a despicable or notorious person, for instance: "Who's the old
ballocks you were talking to?"
"Bollocksed"
Multiple meanings, also spelled "
bolloxed" or "
bollixed":
-
Exhausted: "I couldn't sleep at all last night, I'm completely bollocksed!"
-
Broken: "My foot pump is bollocksed."
-
An extreme state of inebriation or drug-induced stupor: "Last night I got completely bollocksed".
[ "We all went out ... for a few beers to a place called Sean's Bar. Some of the lads were playing darts in there, and there was a lass near them who was utterly bollocksed. She was all over the shop."]
-
Hungover (or equivalent): "I drank two bottles of gin last night, I'm completely bollocksed."
-
Made a mistake: "I tried to draw that landscape, but I bollocksed it up."
The phrase "bollocksed up" means to be in a botched, bungled, confused or disarrayed state; e.g. "He managed to bollix up the whole project."
Positive uses
"Dog's bollocks"
A usage with a positive (albeit still vulgar) sense is "the dog's bollocks" or simplified "The Bollocks".
[ Dog's bollocks – meaning and origin phrases.org.uk, Viz magazine 1989: "Viz: the dog's bollocks: the best of issues 26 to 31".] An example of this usage is: "Before
Tony Blair's speech, a chap near me growled: 'He thinks he's the 'dog's bollocks'. Well, he's entitled to. It was a commanding speech: a real 'dog's bollocks' of an oration."
[The Times, 4 October 1995, p7]
Although this is a recent term (the Online Etymology Dictionary dates it to 1989,
The Oxford English Dictionary says the following mark (":— ") is entitled "the dog’s bollocks", defined as: "typogr. a colon followed by a dash, regarded as forming a shape resembling the male sexual organs." The usage is cited to the year 1949.
This phrase has found its way into popular culture in a number of ways. There is a beer brewed in England by the Wychwood Brewery called the Dog's Bollocks,
The Dutch city Groningen has a pub-style café named "The dog's bollocks".[ thedogsbollocks.nl]
"Chuffed to one's bollocks"
The phrase
"chuffed to one's bollocks" describes someone who is very pleased with themselves.
Nobel laureate Harold Pinter used this in
The Homecoming.
["He'll be chuffed to his bollocks in the morning when he sees his eldest son".] The phrase provided a serious challenge to translators of his work.
Pinter used a similar phrase in an
open letter, published in
The Guardian, and addressed to
Prime Minister Tony Blair, attacking his co-operation with American foreign policy. The letter ends by saying "Oh, by the way, meant to mention, forgot to tell you, we were all
chuffed to the bollocks when Labour won the election."
Peter Raby (2025). 052165842X, Cambridge University Press. 052165842X
Other uses
-
"Bollock-head" is a vulgar British term for a head shaving.
["My baldy chum wasn't smiling now...This bollock-head was obviously an amateur, a cowboy".] It can also refer to someone who is stupid, as can "bollock-brain". The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) cites the expression "His brains are in his ballocks", to designate a fool.
Bollards
The 2007
Concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English quotes "
" as meaning "testicles" and that it is a play on the word bollocks.
[Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor: The concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English, Routledge, 2007. , . p.76]
Literature
The play
Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, published in 1684 and ascribed to John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, includes a character named Bolloxinion, King of Sodom (along with other characters with names such as General Buggeranthos and the maid of honour, Fuckadilla). The word
bollox appears several times in the text, such as:
In 1690, the publisher Benjamin Crayle was fined 20 pounds and sent to prison for his part in publishing the play.[Sheryl Straight (2003). "The Obscenity of Censorship: A History of Indecent People and Lacivious Publications". Retrieved 24 March 2010.]
In one of the tales in Burton's 1885 translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Kafur, the eunuch, says:
Obscenity court ruling
Perhaps the best-known use of the term is in the title of the 1977
punk rock album
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Testimony in a resulting prosecution over the term demonstrated that in
Old English, the word meant a small ball, in the 19th century it was also nickname for clergymen, and then came to used to mean "nonsense".
Defence
barrister John Mortimer QC and
Virgin Records won the case: the court ruled that the word was not
obscene.
It just means "put aside all of that other rubbish and pay attention to this".
In a summary for the defence, Mortimer asked,
Tony Wright, a Leicestershire trader, was given an £80 fixed penalty fine by police for selling T-shirts bearing the slogan "Bollocks to Blair". This took place on 29 June 2006 at the Royal Norfolk Show; the police issued the penalty notice, quoting Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 which refers to language "deemed to cause harassment, alarm or distress".
See also
Notes
Citations
