Bollocks and Bollix: A Racy British Term for Testicles and Messing Things Up

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Elizabeth McNamara, and I am calling from Billings, Montana.

And I have a word that I’d like you people to let me know what it actually means.

The word is bollocks.

I grew up in Ireland, and we used the word bollocks meaning to make a mess of things.

I’ve really bollocks this up.

Well, the whole thing is a complete bollocks.

Well, quite recently, a friend from Ireland was visiting me, and I used the word, and she said,

Oh, my God, Elizabeth, don’t say that.

Don’t say that.

Don’t say that.

And I said, well, why?

And she said, oh, it’s frightful.

It’s absolutely frightful.

Just please don’t say it.

And I have no idea why her reaction to it was so violent.

Would you people have any idea what the word does mean

And why my friend may have been offended by my using it?

How are you spelling it, Elizabeth?

I’m spelling it B-O-L-L-I-X.

Bollocks. Interesting.

Elizabeth, you don’t sound very Irish to me.

No, I went to school in England.

I see.

And when I was 11, I went to boarding school.

And how long have you been in Billings, Montana?

And there were other Irish words I was using, which I found people didn’t understand at all.

And how long have you been in Billings, Montana?

I’ve been in Billings, Montana for a very, very long time.

Well, I won’t tell you just how long, but it’s over 50 years.

Okay, we can get to the bottom of this, Elizabeth.

Your friend’s surprise that your use of the word bollocks doesn’t surprise me.

It goes back to a word meaning testicle or testicles.

And ultimately goes back to a word just meaning ball.

That’s where the ball part comes from it.

The B-O-L-L-I-X spelling is a variant of the B-O-L-L-O-C-K-S, which is a lot more common.

And there are a lot of meanings of this, mostly in the UK.

In the U.S., we only use it when we’re putting on an affectation,

When we are pretending to be British or something along those lines.

So for the most part, we don’t use it here in that way.

So your friend, though, points out that it’s still considerate of kind of a mid-level, some people are going to have a problem with it.

It’s one of those words where you just got to be safe about saying it, at least in the UK.

Here in the U.S., most of the negative impact of bollocks is removed because we just don’t use it here.

It’s like the word bloody here, like you bloody well better do that.

Here, we just don’t really have any connotations of that except from film and television.

So that’s why your friend was kind of alarmed, and that’s probably why, yeah.

There is an Irish and English difference as well.

The bollocks in the Irish tends to be the verb form, which means to mess up or to ruin.

And in the English, it tends to appear in a lot of different forms, typically meaning also something that’s gone bad,

But they tend to be noun phrases or verb phrases that sound a little different.

An exclamation, then.

Yeah, an exclamation or an interjection, right.

Well, maybe I’d be safer not to use it.

Probably, yes.

If I offended people.

You sound like a refined woman,

But there is something in the American psyche, however,

That loves to hear refined people say crass words.

I agree with you there.

That’s right.

That’s right.

But thank you, Elizabeth.

I would keep this between you and the people in your household.

Yes.

Okay.

Take care now.

I’ll do that.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Sure. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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