Bullshit
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Bullshit (often abbreviated bull or BS) is a common English expletive meaning "falsehood". It implies that the person thus accused is willfully lying, or at least attempting to mislead. As with many expletives, it can be used as an interjection or in many other parts of speech.
As it contains the word "shit", the term is considered foul language, hence the need for the euphemistic abbreviations "bull" and "BS".
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Etymology
"Bull", meaning nonsense, dates from around the 17th century (Concise Oxford Dictionary), whereas the term "bullshit" was first used in 1915, in American slang, and came into popular usage only during World War II. The word "bull" itself may have derived from the Old French boul meaning "mistake." The term "bullshit" is a near synonym.
Many believe it to be a simple English-language invention, a combining of "bull" and "shit", referring to the feces of male cattle. The word "shit" (a vulgar term for feces) is often used for something unpleasant; "bullshit," "horseshit," "chickenshit," and "jackshit" have come informally to mean different unpleasant things.
Uses of "bullshit"
Bullshit is commonly employed in situations where truth and accuracy are far less important than the ability to achieve a suitable response in the audience. In many cases, such a response is the gaining of popularity or favour (often needed in politics, religion or advertising). More mundane examples of bullshit often involve the lives of ordinary people. For example, it is not at all uncommon to hear of people "bullshitting" a job interview, or attributing their performance in an examination to their ability to bullshit. In this sense, bullshitting walks the line between extemporaneous speaking and lying outright. It is also common for people to bullshit friends or acquaintances, by spinning an elaborate tall tale. The object here is to make the bullshittees look foolish by dint of their gullibility in accepting the bullshit as fact. Bullshit does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication; with only basic knowledge about a topic, bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions. It may also merely be "filler" or nonsense that, by virtue of its style or wording, gives the impression that it actually means something. In his essay on the subject (see Further reading), William G. Perry called bull[shit] "relevancies, however relevant, without data" and gave a definition of the verb "to bull[shit]" as follows:
- To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content.
The "bullshitter" generally either knows the statements are false or has no interest in their factual accuracy one way or the other. "Talking bullshit" is thus a lesser form of lying, and is likely to elicit a correspondingly weaker emotional response: whereas an obvious liar may be greeted with derision, outrage, or anger, an exponent of bullshit tends to be dismissed with an indifferent sneer.
Sometimes called "shooting the shit," bullshit can also be the act of having a very casual conversation with little value.
Bullshit is also used in the popular saying "money talks, bullshit walks" meaning that people who "do something" will get more results than people who merely talk.
The word "horseshit" is often used in vulgar slang as a synonym for "bullshit" to refer to nonsense. The usage of "horseshit" (a less common term) differs slightly from "bullshit." People may refer to their own statements and presentations as "bullshit," as in the traditional folk saying, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." "Horseshit" is more often used as a reactive exclamation or profoundly distrustful assessment.
"Bullshit" implies dubious credibility with an understood lack of true malevolence, whereas "horseshit" suggests uncompromised ignorance or deception. "Horseshit" carries with it a certain connotation of indignation; stating that something is a "load of horseshit" usually implies that the speaker feels somehow cheated or wronged by the current situation, whereas calling something "bullshit" can imply anything from indignation to a joking and good-natured intent.
A scene from Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I features an amusing use of bullshit relating to the job of a stand-up philosopher (essentially a stand-up comedian by today's standards) as he is applying for unemployment insurance benefits:
- Dole Office Clerk: Occupation?
- Comicus: Stand-up philosopher.
- Dole Office Clerk: What?
- Comicus: Stand-up philosopher. I coalesce the vapors of human existence into a viable and meaningful comprehension.
- Dole Office Clerk: Oh, a bullshit artist!
- Comicus: Grrrr...
- Dole Office Clerk: Did you bullshit last week?
- Comicus: No.
- Dole Office Clerk: Did you try to bullshit last week?
- Comicus: YES.
- Dole Office Clerk: Occupation?
"Bullshit" in philosophy
In his 1986 essay On Bullshit, philosopher Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University characterizes bullshit as a form of falsehood distinct from lying. The liar, Frankfurt holds, knows and cares about the truth, but deliberately sets out to mislead instead of telling the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, does not care about the truth and is only seeking to impress:
- It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. [1] [2]
Frankfurt connects this analysis of bullshit with Ludwig Wittgenstein's disdain of "non-sense" talk, and with the popular concept of a "bull session" in which speakers may try out unusual views without commitment. He fixes the blame for the prevalence of bullshit in modern society upon anti-realism and upon the growing frequency of situations in which people are expected to speak or have opinions without knowing what they're talking about.
Further reading
- Template:Cite book — Halifax academic Laura Penny's study of the phenomenon of bullshit and its impact on modern society.
- Template:Cite book — Harry Frankfurt's detailed analysis of the concept of bullshit.
- Perry, William G. (1967). Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts. Originally published in Harvard College: A Collection of Essays by Members of the Harvard Faculty.
See also
- Bollocks
- Chickenshit
- Gobbledygook
- Gibberish
- Hogwash
- Nonsense
- Tall tale
- Propaganda
- Fiction
- Lie
- Perverb
- Bunkum
- Truthiness
- Penn & Teller: Bullshit! TV Series