Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Blatherskite

Now here's a wonderful word for you: Blatherskite.

Can you guess what it means?

No peeking at an online dictionary! You have to guess first...
 >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Personally, I wondered if it had something to do with blather, as when someone is blabbing on and on and not making much sense.

Well, I was on the right track, apparently. According to Merriam Webster,  the noun blatherskite means either (1) a person who blathers a lot or (2) nonsense, blather, and it dates from the mid-1600s... Now that's a word with a history!

World Wide Words delved into its origins and subsequent popularity in the U.S.:

Both halves of the word seem to be from Old Norse. Blether is a Scots word meaning loquacious claptrap, which comes from Old Norse blathra, to talk nonsense; it exists in various forms now, such as blather or blither (if you call someone a blithering idiot, as people in Britain often did in my youth, you’re using the same word, though most of the meaning had by then been leached out of it). Skate (skite, as Australians and New Zealanders will know it) is more problematic, but is the Scots word for a person held in contempt because of his boasting, which may derive from an Old Norse word meaning to shoot (and, if true, is probably the origin of the American skeet, as in skeet shooting, so that phrase actually means “shoot shooting”).

WWW goes on to explain that blatherskite first appeared in Maggie Lauder, a Scots ballad circa 1643. The ballad was very popular with the American side in the War of Independence. Alas, it doesn't pop up in daily conversation at the present, although it does seem appropriate for the times...

 

I sense blatherskite is in the air, everywhere...
Image by Prawny from Pixabay