malarkey
/məˈlɑɹki/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.41 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "I decided it was a bunch of malarkey and stopped reading about halfway through."
- "Malachy—You said it—I wouldn't trust a lawyer no further than I could throw a case of Scotch."
- "It's a lot of mallarky for mothers, sisters, and sweethearts to ask "Laddie, when you're far away will you think of me?" The answer is NO! The girls who teach the soldier boys are kept busy as a bee. It's the soldier boys who pay."
- "She shrugged. "I've told you all I know." / "Mallarky. You haven't even begun to spill and you know it.""
- "If I told you that we had launched the glove washing program without effort it would be purely malarkey. Right off the bat we had some squawks about dermatitis."
- "'Smuggling,' she said. 'has a fine romantic ring about it—once aboard the lugger, you heave ho and all that kind of malarky. [...]'"
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)
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: mallachtóireacht, μαλακίες
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /məˈlɑɹki/
- British English: /məˈlɑːki/