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Last month's column found Blanche on a nude beach in Mykonos, chatting with her British friends Ffiona, Sebastian, Nigel, and Gareth about the many uses of bollocks in British English. As she pointed out there, bollocks refers literally to the testicles. It's related to the word balls, which is the common American English equivalent. But far from being restricted to anatomy, the British word has gone on to take several additional meanings. And the vacationing Brits were happy to clue Miss Poubelle in on the mysteries of British bollocks.

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One of the most common uses of the word is found in a phrase like That's bollocks, meaning 'That's nonsense.' In last month's column, Blanche pointed out that many terms which mean 'a mess, a foul up' use terms related to sex. Fuck up and screw up are perhaps the most common of these in American English. British English also says that something is a balls up if it is a complete mess. It's not too hard to see how a word that means 'a mess, a confusion' might also be used to mean 'nonsense.'

Americans no longer seem to use references to the testicles to mean 'nonsense,' but there is some evidence that at one time this was more widespread. In a 1903 book about Harvard, an American students says something is balls, meaning it makes no sense. And during WWII, when the Germans demanded a surrender at Bastogne, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe replied "Nuts!" Miss Poubelle thinks that this last sense survives marginally in American English in the phrase Nuts to you. This was originally strong language meaning 'the hell with you,' but now seems to be the cutesy name of half the webpages and newsletters dealing with the nut industry.

Related to the 'nonsense' meaning is a peculiarly British English form of emphatic denial, shown in the following examples from the Internet: Did he have any "stress counselling"? Did he BOLLOCKS! And, Did he care ? Did he bollocks. Or, Blair would have shat himself, but would he have done anything about it? Would he bollocks. Roughly paraphrased, these mean something like "what you just said is nonsense." American English has a rough equivalent in exchanges like You enjoyed the Celine Dion concert, didn't you? The hell I did. Or, Will you buy me that ramekin? The hell I will.

As if this were not enough uses for the word, Nigel was kind enough to point out another use. To say John got a good bollocking means 'John was severely reprimanded.' This one was a bit of a puzzle. Did bollocking originally involve some sort of testicular punishment? (The kind acronymically referred to as "CBT" in personals ads?) There seemed to be no evidence for that, and Gareth assured her that a woman is just as likely to get a bollocking as a man.

Pulling out the copy of the dictionary that she carries with her everywhere, Miss Poubelle found that most slang for reprimand involves words for loud noises: bawl out, read the riot act, roar at, give an earful, etc. One of these phrases caught Miss Poubelle's eye-- to get a good rollicking means 'to receive a reprimand' and is slightly older than the bollocking phrase. It is dated from the 1830s. Rollicking also means 'making a lot of noise,' so the general idea is that one got yelled at. It seems likely to Blanche that rollicking is the older phrase and bollocking is a later, humorous alteration to that phrase.

By this time the boats had begun to arrive to take us back to town, so we reluctantly began to dress. Miss Poubelle packed her copy of the Oxford English Dictionary into its travel case and got one last look at Sebastian's lovely bollocks before he pulled his shorts up. Then it was off to town to further pursue her testicular investigations in the bars of Mykonos....