Irish slang – Bollocks

In Ireland, bollocks (or bollox, bollix) means testicles, but it’s mostly an insult for a stubborn, nasty person, a curse when things go wrong, or a word for nonsense. The dog’s bollocks, though, is the best thing going.

So you think – hey, I speak English. I’ll take a holiday (that’s vacation to you, Mr & Mrs USA) in Ireland and get on just fine!
Sure, you think, there might be some problems with understanding accents from time to time, but there’s not going to be any REAL problems communicating; if I don’t understand something, I’ll just ask them to repeat themselves.

Well, you’d be mostly right. Ireland is, after all, a predominately English-speaking nation. You will encounter bits of Irish here and there (more on that later) but the thing that tickled my ears the most when I first moved here and that tends to confuse our stateside guests is some of the slang. So, below is the eleventh in a series I’ll be publishing of some common Irish slang that used to confuse us when we first arrived.

Bollocks – Testicles. Spelled sometimes bollix or bollox, the word is known primarily as British slang (made famous world-wide when the the Sex Pistols’ album was released in 1977) , but is lodged firmly in the Irish vernacular as well. It has been put forward that the word may actually be Celtic in origin, from the Irish word bolg, meaning “bag,” though most dictionaries trace it to the Old English beallucas, “testicles.” The Sex Pistols’ 1977 court case over the album title was dismissed after an expert witness for the band told the court the word had once been slang for a clergyman.

Aren’t lawyers great?

In Ireland it’s used primarily as an insult, meaning a person is spitefully stubborn or mean-spirited (“He’s a real bollocks!”), or it’s used simply on its own as a curse venting frustration (“Oh no, I missed the last bus? Bollocks!!”). It’s also used to mean somebody severely mismanaged something, (“He made a bollix of the whole job”). It can also mean something makes no sense or is an outright lie (“You were U2’s singer before Bono? That’s complete bollocks!”). Confusingly, when the bollocks belong to a dog, that means something is terrific, really top notch (“That new iPhone is the dog’s bollocks!”).

It can, of course, simply be a vulgar way of referring to actual testicles (“He kicked me in the bollocks.”).