Anu Garg's wonderful daily e-mail, A.Word.A.Day, left the following fantastic example of lexicography capitulating ontogeny in my mailbox today:
bushwa (BUSH-wa), n. (also bushwah): Nonsense; bull.
You just can't make this stuff up. My Compact OED (complete with magnifying glass, a Chanukah gift from David very much appreciated by this geek of language) does not offer much in way of etymology of this apt expression, merely noting that it is "app[arently] a euphemism for BULLSHIT." The earliest usage offered by the OED dates to 1920, but the best one dates to 1932, attributed to J. Dos Passos: "They said this war-talk was a lot of bushwa propaganda." (In another piece of synchronicity, a Dos Passos collection is a featured book on Jerry Colonna's blog just now.)
Remember this handy bon mot when faced with the next credulity-straining pronouncement from the White House: it's nothing but a load of bushwa.
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