Malarkey and its etymology

Western Folklore, Summer 2002 by Sayers, William

Willard, NY

NOTES

1 The current edition of the American Hentage Dictionary defines the word as "exaggerated or foolish talk, usually intended to deceive."

2 Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1962. Brief treatment, but no etymology, is offered in The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, 1995, and The Morns Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, 1977. Other well-known lexicographers--Klein, Onions, Skeat--have no entries for malarhey.

3 Basic bibliographical details from The Oxford English Dictionary 1989, s.v. malarkey: Frank Scully, "The Beaut from Montana," Esquire, December, 1938, p. 49; Variety, 29 October, 1930 (no byline, but Scully had a column in the same issue; Down Beat 5, 1938, p. 4 (a reference that even the wonders of interlibrary loans have not been able to recover for me).

4 One producer markets the tubers under the politically less sensitive brand name "Sunchokes," allowing the plant to circle back to its onomastic origins.

5 The front vowels e, i, e, are in this instance orthographical signs indicating the palatal nature of the adjacent consonants, so that the vocalism of the word is quite close to that of malarkey.

WORKS CITED

American Heritage Dictionary. 2000. 4th ed. New York, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. 1995. Ed. Robert K. Barnhart. New York: Harper Collins.

Focloir Gaedhilge agus Bearla: An Irish-English Dictionary. 1927. Ed. Patrick S. Dineen. Dublin: Irish Texts Society.

The Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary. 1971. Ed. Edward Dwelly. Glasgow: Gairm Productions.

McEvoy, Joseph Patrick. 1929. Hollywood Girl New York: Simon and Schuster.

Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins. 1977. William and Mary Morris, eds. New York: Harper and Row.