Definition of MALARKEY

malarkey

Plural: malarkeys

Noun

  • Nonsense or foolish talk.
  • empty rhetoric or insincere or exaggerated talk
  • Nonsense; rubbish.

Examples

  • All his bluffs about having a great rack were just malarkey.
  • I decided it was a bunch of malarkey and stopped reading about halfway through.

Origin / Etymology

Of unknown origin; the word was popularized by the Irish-American cartoonist Thomas Aloysius (“Tad”) Dorgan (1877–1929), who started using it in cartoons on March 9, 1922.
Maybe from Irish mallachtóireacht or Greek μαλακίες (malakíes)

Synonyms

idle words, jazz, malarky, nothingness, wind, BS, Bandini, Greek, Irish bull, absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, applesauce, bafflegab, balderdash, balls, baloney, banana oil, baragouin, batcrap, batshit, bilgewater, blah, blather, blatherskite, bobbins, bollocks, bosh, bull, bull feathers, bullcrap, bulldust, bullshit, bullspeak, bunk, bunkum, bushwah, clamjamfrey, claptrap, cobblers, codswallop, crap, crock, crock of shit, double Dutch, double talk, doublespeak, drivel, eyewash, fiddle-faddle, flapdoodle, flim-flam, flizz, flummery, folderol, foolishness, footle, framis, fuckery, fuckry, fudge, galimatias, garbage, garble, gibber, gibberish, gobbledygook, gossip, guff, gup, hoax, hocus-pocus, hogwash, hokum, hooey, horse hockey, horse piss, horse puckey, horsefeathers, horseshit, humbug, jabber, jargon, jibber-jabber, jimjam, jive, junk, lallation, macaroni, malarkey, manure, meaninglessness, moonshine, mumbo jumbo, nertz, nonsense, pie in the sky, piffle, pigswill, poppycock, prattle, put-on, rhubarb, rhubarb rhubarb, rigmarole, rot, rubbish, ruse, santorum, shit, shite, skimble-skamble, squit, stuff, stuff and nonsense, tommy-rot, tosh, trash, tripe, tush, twaddle, wass, whiff-whaff, word salad

Scrabble Score: 17

malarkey: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
malarkey: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
malarkey: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 18

malarkey: valid Words With Friends Word