bushwah

English

Alternative forms

Etymology 1

Uncertain, first attested in the 1900s. Perhaps from dialectal bodewash (“dried buffalo dung”)[1][2] or by Etymology 2, from bourgeois.[3] Subsequently used as a minced oath variant of bullshit,[4] though bullshit itself is only attested from the 1910s.

Noun

bushwah (uncountable)

  1. (US) Nonsense; euphemistic form of bullshit.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:nonsense
    • 1925, George Jean Nathan, The Autobiography of an Attitude, page 230:
      These plays, one and all, were either sentimental bushwah or tragic nonsense.
    • 1948, James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor, page 258:
      This death or glory stuff is all bushwah, except with nuts; and those, you don’t want. An outfit of smart guys, always trying to figure the opposition before the opposition figures them; they can take, any time, any day, an outfit of nuts wound up to crash their planes into something.
    • 1983, Theodore V. Olsen, Red is the River, →ISBN, page 102:
      “ […] They’re not taken in by all that socialist bullsh—” He cleared his throat. “Bushwah.”
    • 1991, Martin Caidin, Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings, →ISBN, page 42:
      Oftentimes proof is only in the speaking, but the people listening are pros with tremendous experience in flight, and they can pick out the bushwah instantly.
Translations

References
  1. “An English View of American Slang”, in The Boston Sunday Globe, 1909 March 14, page 43: “‘Bodewash,’ which he rightly derives from ‘bois de vache’ and rightly interprets as buffalo chips, he has: but he never gives place to the Indian form ‘bushwa.’”
  2. Alfred Hubbard Holt (1936) “booshwah, bushwa”, in Phrase Origins: A Study of Familiar Expressions, Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, page 38
  3. Mark Peters (2015) “bushwa”, in Bullshit: A Lexicon, Three Rivers Press, →ISBN
  4. “bushwa, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Etymology 2

From bourgeois.

Adjective

bushwah

  1. Pronunciation spelling of bourgeois.
    • 1947, The International Bookbinder‎, volume 48, page 6:
      “These contrary policies are logical for Communists. To them consistency, morality and truthfulness are ‘bushwah’ dope that drugs workers and delays the revolution.”
    • 1971, Henry Van Dyke, Dead Piano, published 1997, page 35:
      “Jesus, you goddamn bushwa niggers in your bushwa house with your bushwa piano. […]” ¶ […] “No one asked you come to this—this—and the word you’re trying to use is—is bourgeois,” Sophie said, correcting him with icy tranquillity.
    • 1984, Melvyn Dubofsky, “Socialism and Syndicalism”, in John H. M. Laslett, Seymour Martin Lipset, editors, Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism, 2nd edition, →ISBN, page 184:
      Other IWW leaders conceded they would be willing to dynamite factories and mills in order to win a strike. All of them hurled their defiance at “bushwa” law.
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