Words we use: Balder

The late Beryl Bainbridge gave me the word balder from her native Lancashire. She was referring to an English politician; she wouldn't give him a job baldering, she said, and what she meant was that she wouldn't have him breaking stones on the road. A balder, then, was a stonebreaker.

Friends who live near Norwich have the verb balder, meaning to use coarse language, to abuse. The word is common all over East Anglia, and from Suffolk the English Dialect Dictionary has, "We should whiningly complain of having been bawder'd and ragg'd in a shameful way."

The word balderdash, which has a variety of meanings, is, or used to be, weak, washy drink. The Ulster Journal of Archaeology II (1854) tells us that "a pint of porter with a 'dash' in it is so called in Dublin hotels." Balderdash, used of language, meant both nonsense and filthy, obscene talk. Robson's Satyr upon Women, written in Northumberand in 1715, has, "Or cull one from the vulgar class, She balderdash will bawl."

The word also means impudent language, abuse. Capt Grose recorded this meaning of the word in Devon in 1790. It is still found there today, and also in Gloucestershire, where I heard it used at Cheltenham races the year Arkle won his first Gold Cup.

Robertson's Phrases (1693) has, "Balderdash, of drink, mixta potio; of other things, farrago", a word defined by Merriam-Webster as "a confused mixture, hodgepodge" (from Latin farragin, mixed fodder for cattle, hence, figuratively, a medley, confused mixture, from far, spelt, corn). Ben Jonson's New Inn (1629, has, "It is against my freehold . . . To drink such balderdash or bonny-clabber."

Bark is a cant word for an Irishman, found in Lancashire and Northumberland to this day. The venerable scholarly journal Notes and Queries, in 1869, 4th series, confirms that in Lancashire, "an Irishman is vulgarly called a bark." Carew's enthralling Autobiography of a Gipsy (1891) has, "When I was about fourteen I slung my 'ook and joined some travellin' barks."

Chater's Tyneside Almanack of 1869 contains the line "Fond o' toddy, full o' larks, fytin sumtimes wi' the barks." The English Dialect Dictionary has, "Some thirty years ago the Irish residents in Sandgate, Newcastle, formed three-fourths of the inhabitants, and were always having quarrels with keelmen etc. They were, and still are, called barks."

Bark, as I said, is a cant word, and like most cant words, its origin is unknown.