Bullshit is a common
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
expletiveExpletive comes from the Latin verb explere, meaning "to fill", via expletivus, "filling out". It was introduced into English in the seventeenth century to refer to various kinds of padding—the padding out of a book with peripheral material, the addition of syllables to a line of poetry for...
which may be shortened to the
euphemismA euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
bull or the initialism
B.S. In
British EnglishBritish English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
, "
bollocks"Bollocks" is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning "testicles". The word is often used figuratively in British English and Hiberno-English, as a noun to mean "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to mean "poor quality" or "useless"...
" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English. As with many expletives, it can be used as an
interjectionIn grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings. It can be used either as a
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
or as a
verbA verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
. Used as an interjection, it protests the use of misleading, disingenuous, or false language.