bushwah

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology 1

Uncertain, first attested in the 1900s. Perhaps from dialectal bodewash (“dried buffalo dung”)[1][2] or by Etymology 2, from bourgeois.[3] Subsequently used as a minced oath variant of bullshit,[4] though bullshit itself is only attested from the 1910s.

Noun

bushwah (uncountable)

  1. (US) Nonsense; euphemistic form of bullshit.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:nonsense
    • 1925, George Jean Nathan, The Autobiography of an Attitude, page 230:
      These plays, one and all, were either sentimental bushwah or tragic nonsense.
    • 1948, James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor, page 258:
      This death or glory stuff is all bushwah, except with nuts; and those, you don’t want. An outfit of smart guys, always trying to figure the opposition before the opposition figures them; they can take, any time, any day, an outfit of nuts wound up to crash their planes into something.
    • 1983, Theodore V. Olsen, Red is the River, →ISBN, page 102:
      “ […] They’re not taken in by all that socialist bullsh—” He cleared his throat. “Bushwah.”
    • 1991, Martin Caidin, Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings, →ISBN, page 42:
      Oftentimes proof is only in the speaking, but the people listening are pros with tremendous experience in flight, and they can pick out the bushwah instantly.
Translations

References

  1. ^ “An English View of American Slang”, in The Boston Sunday Globe, 1909 March 14, page 43: “‘Bodewash,’ which he rightly derives from ‘bois de vache’ and rightly interprets as buffalo chips, he has: but he never gives place to the Indian form ‘bushwa.’”
  2. ^ Alfred Hubbard Holt (1936) “booshwah, bushwa”, in Phrase Origins: A Study of Familiar Expressions, Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, page 38
  3. ^ Mark Peters (2015) “bushwa”, in Bullshit: A Lexicon, Three Rivers Press, →ISBN
  4. ^ “bushwa, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Etymology 2

From bourgeois.

Adjective

bushwah

  1. Pronunciation spelling of bourgeois.
    • 1947, The International Bookbinder‎, volume 48, page 6:
      “These contrary policies are logical for Communists. To them consistency, morality and truthfulness are ‘bushwah’ dope that drugs workers and delays the revolution.”
    • 1971, Henry Van Dyke, Dead Piano, published 1997, page 35:
      “Jesus, you goddamn bushwa niggers in your bushwa house with your bushwa piano. […]” ¶ […] “No one asked you come to this—this—and the word you’re trying to use is—is bourgeois,” Sophie said, correcting him with icy tranquillity.
    • 1984, Melvyn Dubofsky, “Socialism and Syndicalism”, in John H. M. Laslett, Seymour Martin Lipset, editors, Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism, 2nd edition, →ISBN, page 184:
      Other IWW leaders conceded they would be willing to dynamite factories and mills in order to win a strike. All of them hurled their defiance at “bushwa” law.
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