Codology – a Fishy Tale
Hello,
This week’s word is codology and it was suggested by Sinéad Brassil, friend of the blog, and the LMFM radio presenter who kindly hosts Wordfoolery Wednesdays once a month. I should also mention that it’s one of my mother’s favourite words.
Firstly, what is codology? It’s the elevation of codding to the level of a science – the talking of utter nonsense. For example, “I wish that politician would stop his old codology. We all know he’s talking rubbish.” Then what’s codding? It is to joke around. I’ve spelled it with two Ds to differentiate it from coding (i.e. writing computer code) but honestly I’m not sure of the spelling when used as a verb.
Readers of a certain era will recall a telephone ad for British Telecom featuring the wonderful Maureen Lipman praising a beloved grandchild who had failed most of their exams but managed to pass one of the “ologies”, I wonder if I could pass an exam in codology?
Codology is an Irish English word which, according to the OED, first appeared in print in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” in 1922 (“The why and wherefore and all the codology of the business”). Eric Partridge’s “Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English” and Cassell’s “Dictionary of Slang”, however, both think codology dates to around 1910 so in all likelihood it was in use before Joyce but he helped it on its way.
American English has a similar term – kidology drawn from kidding around.
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Fishing for codology
A cod, is more than a fish in this context. To cod somebody is to hoax them, to mimic them, to trick or joke with them. Cod used in this way pre-dates codology but I can’t find any source to explain how we made the linguistic leap from a fish to a joke, except perhaps the French tradition of Poisson D’Avril, their version of April Fool’s Day where the victim is slapped with a wet fish instead of a verbal joke.
There’s no link I can find to codswallop, by the way, as it doesn’t appear in print until the 1950s, although again it does sound a little like hitting somebody with a fish. Wallop was slang for beer apparently, I like that.
Until next time happy reading, writing, wordfooling, and duck if anybody comes at you swinging a fish,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
p.s. SmartThinking Books, the book blog for nonfiction readers, kindly asked me to contribute to their Christmas Book Recommendations this week.
p.p.s. My short fiction “Volume Control” is in the November issue of The Secret Attic and tells the tale of the two sweet little old ladies who live next door.
