# What does the british word "bullocks" mean? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 31, 2001, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488 "2001-01-31T01:10:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/21 "2001-02-02T04:04:31Z")
**ticker** said > [@](#): > > I am 37 years old and I got a bollocking from my dad for saying “bollocks” when I was only seven or eight. You either said “bollix” or “ballocks”. Not “bollocks”. ---
**Author:** ![ticker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@ticker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ticker)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/22 "2001-02-02T09:44:53Z")
Sorry but that is just **BOLLOCKS** I looked it up last night in the Oxford Dictionary of Slang. It dated the first usage of “bollocks” meaning testicles as 1770. ---
**Author:** ![ticker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@ticker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ticker)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/23 "2001-02-02T11:17:31Z")
Oh yeah, and if you go here: [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002KIE/qid=981112491/sr=2-1/ref=sc\_m\_1/107-0473524-0151748](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002KIE/qid=981112491/sr=2-1/ref=sc_m_1/107-0473524-0151748) you will see one of its more infamous usages from 24 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/24 "2001-02-02T12:29:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by samclem \* > \*\*Let’s summerize(with criticisms, where appropriate): > […] > 2. “bollocks” is not a word prior to someone inventing the spelling in the last 10 years or so. If I am wrong, please show me the cite. I am frequently wrong, and would love to be proved wrong here.[…] > \*\* 1. “Summarise” doesn’t mean “make up new stuff that doesn’t in any way follow from what’s gone before”. 2. If you **do** make a surprising assertion like this, the burden of proof is on you. Saying “if I am wrong, please show me the cite” is not the way to go. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/25 "2001-02-02T12:46:14Z")
So, samclem, you want a cite which disproves that ‘bollocks’ is a spelling invented about ten years ago. How about the title of the aforementioned Sex Pistols albums? That gets us back to 1977. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/26 "2001-02-02T13:00:19Z")
Slang tends to be less well recorded than nice language. I am fifty and remember ‘bollocks’ being a rude word that could just be used (unlike f or c words) in humor in England in the fifties. Comedy programs over used Bollards as a Eupemism as the BBC would not allow a whole list of words. ‘Beyond Our Ken’, a radio comedy, had a sketch where there was a cigarette calld Bollard- this would have been late fifties, early sixties. In the seventies there was a license plate in LA, owned by a Brit with BOLLOCKS as the letters; of course, only Brits and Aussies etc. saw the humor. Given that my dictionary of slang gives ‘to make a balls of’ as 1889, and given then Bollocks means ‘little balls’, I would not be surprised to find that Bollocks has a longer history than the nineteen thirties- just not recorded in writing. By the way, ‘The Dogs Bollocks’ has given way in humor to ‘The Mutts Nuts’. ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/27 "2001-02-02T19:41:52Z")
Just a nitpick: A bollard originally was a mooring post on a dock. (Merriam-Webster dates it to ~1775.). The traffic-island meaning came later, and according to M-W is “_chiefly British_”. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/28 "2001-02-02T20:48:08Z")
Agree. The comedy sketch I referred to above was later filmed and showed a sailor sitting on a bollard- a metal post on a quay. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2001, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488/29 "2001-02-04T00:13:20Z")
I admit it! I screwed up. _Bollocks_ was indeed a word in print a long, long time ago. **ticker** I owe you an apology. I got carried away trying to separate the two meanings of the word that have been used in this thread. **ticker** said > [@](#): > > Sorry but that is just BOLLOCKS > > I looked it up last night in the Oxford Dictionary of Slang. It dated the first usage of “bollocks” meaning testicles as 1770. . As a matter of fact, the word can be traced back to 1763 currently. And using that spelling. And it certainly meant either “balls” or “balls and penis.” Somewhere along the line, the epithet came to be used to indicate that something was screwed up, messed up, fouled up. That is the word _bollix_ or _bollixed up_ which was obviously derived from _ballocks_ or _bollocks_. From ca. 1680, in J. Thorpe _Rochester’s Poems_ “Ballocks, cry’d Newport, I hate that dull Rogue.” Only to indicate that the possibly earliest printed usage was _ballocks_. I think it’s one of those words that gets spelt! however you hear it or what the accent of the speaker intones. Again, my apologies for posting quickly and recklessly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-british-word-bullocks-mean/52488.md?page=1)