Bollocks

Bollocks, at its plainest, means testicles, and thus makes a perfect expletive. That said, on a more complex level it can also refer to utter destruction. Utter destruction, yes: the kind of utter destruction you only get when you've left your nan alone with the DVD player and she's pressed all the buttons on the remote trying to get the tape to rewind. It's a simple yet pleasing word, favourable to the tongue with a pleasant aftertaste, and one which is well known to anyone of British origin, though recently it's made a pleasing bid for world domination. Online dictionaries, however, will politely refer you to the word bollix, for which www.thesaurus.com provides alternatives such as blunder, botch, flounder, mistake or the more appropriate muff up. In Britain, you see, bollocks fits perfectly alongside every other sexual swear word ever invented, solely because it refers to balls but also because it can be used in a whole range of situations. This is the acid test of swear-words, and bollocks passes with flying colours.

How? Well, despite this simple definition, bollocks (like any other swear word) has a whole plethora of obscure meanings. Just like shit, in fact: everyone's favourite brown word. Shit can mean the worst of the worst ("These cornflakes are shit!") or the best thing ever ("This oregano, Brian, is the good shit"). Fuck works in just the same way, maybe to an even greater degree.

It comes as little surprise to find, then, that bollocks is also possessed of this marvellous ability, though with one proviso. For bollocks to mean good it is usually, though not always, accompanied by the word dog's. The dog's bollocks apparently arrived on the scene in 1989, though where and how remains entirely unclear. Viz magazine, in particular, had a penchant for the phrase, but then anything even vaguely smutty was a magnet for the Viz crowd. Incidentally, apostrophe freaks will note that it is a particular canine's testicles which are undergoing scrotal scrutiny, and not the general testicular region of all dog-kind, though nobody stops for an instant to imagine why the balls of a dog would be quite so exciting. (Perhaps it's those afternoons of fun round at Auntie Maud's, flicking the prominent testicles of her jack russell just to hear it yelp. I know it is in my case...)

Things probably came to a head with Sex Pistols' 1977 release of Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, which sparked various courtroom-related shenanigans concerning the use of the word bollocks. Legal action took place under the Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889 after the manager of a Virgin Record Shop in Nottingham was forced to dismantle his display of Sex Pistols' posters and subsequently arrested. Arriving in court, the whole case revolved around the use of the word bollocks, an alleged obscenity. The issue was eventually sorted out by Richard Branson, who called upon James Kingsley, a professor of linguistics and a former priest, to testify that the word bollocks was eighteenth century slang and entirely acceptable. He explained the bollock was an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'small ball'. Additionally, bollock was used as a slang term for clergymen, indicating their reputation for talking nonsense, or a load of old balls. Some things never change.

Since that time the use of the word bollocks has become as much part of British life as fish and chips, roast beef and mushy peas. Anyone now, at approximately quarter to eleven in the Dog And Duck on a Friday night, espousing their theory of world domination with gay abandon, can expect several shouts of Bollocks! and, in fact, will appreciate it. Such is British culture.

Memorably, Jasper Carrott recalls in one of his books, how there was a time where the whole of North America were blissfully unaware of the word bollocks. A friend, moving to the United States, took the opportunity to have a licence plate which displayed the word 'bollocks' in a slightly bastardised form. Upon, one day, being asked its meaning he collapsed into laughter and informed the enquiree that it meant 'spots'. Apparently, Jasper was with the unfortunate lady when she marched into Boots, pointed to a large zit on her chin and asked for some cream to rub into her bollocks. With regard to the veracity of this story, curiously enough the word 'bollocks' springs to mind...