Well, piffle means balderdash or bunkum (picayune means small minded) - the alliterative sound at the beginning of the phrase sounds like you're well-nigh choking on your words, spitting the dummy at whoever it is who fed you tripe, and there is just no way the phrase can be uttered without somewhat massively spluttering, spraying hopefully contaminant billows of warm spittle spoondrift all over the guilty parties.
Cool.
Lies have always reeked of brimstone. Scott Peck, the American psychiatrist and author - best selling author of the thoroughly wonderful 'The Road Less Traveled' - published his analysis of evil under the title 'People of the Lie'.
Case closed. Open and shut.
We really wish it were that simple, don't we? Aah, for the certainties of a black and white, manichean life and world.
The fact is, 'People of the Lie' is probably Scott Peck's weakest book.
Piffle - a.k.a. lies and mendacity, also bald-faced balderdash, baloney, billy-shiny-pants bilge, hollow blatherings, arrant bull, nasty bunkum, unposh bosh, claptrap, codswallop, drivel, crapola, faddlesnooks and fiddlesticks, BS, flapdoodle, guff, hogswill, rot, sheer rubbish, stuff and nonsense, tosh, trash, twaddle, and many other words of the same ilk - not only is an inevitable part of life - as the perhaps worldly-wise French would put it, "toutes les vérités ne sont pas bonnes à dire " - not all truths can be uttered - but furthermore - outright piffle has shaped and largely driven evolution across the planet, and rather surprisingly massively contributed to human progress - so it's probably here to stay, and not all of it is bad.
The whole armory of hunting, be it by lions or hominids or humans or whatever, is rooted in putting across untruths - hiding, camouflage - to the intended prey. Like it or not (I not, but hey, RIAHM - reality is a harsh mistress), we were shaped by hunting - meat and fire and got us out of the caves and created civilization. Even bodies were shaped by lies: The deep sea angler fish for instance evolved a small decoy fake fish atop its horrid fangy gaping maw, which it flicks about so that passing-by dumb fish will mistake the to and froing twitching appendage for small yummy fry - and be swallowed instead.
Time and again lies fostered swift progress. Instances are too numerous to tell, but here are a few marking ones.
In the late 70s early 80s, software applications were new and were beginning to make industrial processes far more efficient than they had ever been. Unfortunately, owing to a range of factors the costs of software development was astronomical - far more than the industry could possibly bear. To finance itself, the industry essentially promised the moon to its clients - and delivered early firmly Earth-bound versions (of its software applications. Releases that fell very far short of the promised functionalities, that were unstable and crashed, you get the picture. But the clients' money rolled in, financing the hard work required to develop the subsequent releases of the software which, gradually over the years, became better and worked and immensely accelerated industrial progress.
This process incidentally gave rise to a new word: vaporware. But in the end - it all worked.
Same thing with the famous junk bonds of the 80s: they ruined people taken in by smooth words and fake visions of El Dorado and of the glittering city on the hill - but they also spawned industries that would not have sprung up otherwise.
Samewise, the rise of the internet was financed by the very useful dot com bubble of a few years ago, when countless billions were poured into the industry, thus creating and sustaining it - and ruining millions in the process, when ineluctably the bubble burst.
Nothing new there: we do have short memories, but this is exactly the way the automotive industry was created in the 1920s: vast amounts of mom and pop sourced investment monies poured in, and the industry was created on money that would not have been available but for all the piffle and the hype, then the inescapable shake-out took place, a few names survived (Ford), and the rest is history - as countless retirement swags were too.
Now that I've been the Devil's advocate - there is also terrible, terrible piffle bereft of any redeeming value. Fake business plans circulate and lay claim to extraordinary, earth-shaking, civilization-transforming innovations based on unworkable violations of the laws of Physics, which the skellums who ciculate these business plans know full well do not work but use them as vehicles to try and raise investment monies to have fun with, bet at the casinos and bedazzle the hangers-on.
Or the fellow who recently tried to sell me not the piece of luggage I wanted, but the one he scrounged the most commission off. And his spiel, Ladies and Gentlemen, now that was the most arrant piece of pathetic, pitiful, pig-headed, pijama-brains, pissant, piddling, pinheaded picayune pip-squeak spiv's piffle I had heard in a long time.
1 comment:
Well, piffle means balderdash or bunkum (picayune means small minded) - the alliterative sound at the beginning of the phrase sounds like you're well-nigh choking on your words, spitting the dummy at whoever it is who fed you tripe, and there is just no way the phrase can be uttered without somewhat massively spluttering, spraying hopefully contaminant billows of warm spittle spoondrift all over the guilty parties.
Cool.
Lies have always reeked of brimstone. Scott Peck, the American psychiatrist and author - best selling author of the thoroughly wonderful 'The Road Less Traveled' - published his analysis of evil under the title 'People of the Lie'.
Case closed. Open and shut.
We really wish it were that simple, don't we? Aah, for the certainties of a black and white, manichean life and world.
The fact is, 'People of the Lie' is probably Scott Peck's weakest book.
Piffle - a.k.a. lies and mendacity, also bald-faced balderdash, baloney, billy-shiny-pants bilge, hollow blatherings, arrant bull, nasty bunkum, unposh bosh, claptrap, codswallop, drivel, crapola, faddlesnooks and fiddlesticks, BS, flapdoodle, guff, hogswill, rot, sheer rubbish, stuff and nonsense, tosh, trash, twaddle, and many other words of the same ilk - not only is an inevitable part of life - as the perhaps worldly-wise French would put it, "toutes les vérités ne sont pas bonnes à dire " - not all truths can be uttered - but furthermore - outright piffle has shaped and largely driven evolution across the planet, and rather surprisingly massively contributed to human progress - so it's probably here to stay, and not all of it is bad.
The whole armory of hunting, be it by lions or hominids or humans or whatever, is rooted in putting across untruths - hiding, camouflage - to the intended prey. Like it or not (I not, but hey, RIAHM - reality is a harsh mistress), we were shaped by hunting - meat and fire and got us out of the caves and created civilization. Even bodies were shaped by lies: The deep sea angler fish for instance evolved a small decoy fake fish atop its horrid fangy gaping maw, which it flicks about so that passing-by dumb fish will mistake the to and froing twitching appendage for small yummy fry - and be swallowed instead.
Time and again lies fostered swift progress. Instances are too numerous to tell, but here are a few marking ones.
In the late 70s early 80s, software applications were new and were beginning to make industrial processes far more efficient than they had ever been. Unfortunately, owing to a range of factors the costs of software development was astronomical - far more than the industry could possibly bear. To finance itself, the industry essentially promised the moon to its clients - and delivered early firmly Earth-bound versions (of its software applications. Releases that fell very far short of the promised functionalities, that were unstable and crashed, you get the picture. But the clients' money rolled in, financing the hard work required to develop the subsequent releases of the software which, gradually over the years, became better and worked and immensely accelerated industrial progress.
This process incidentally gave rise to a new word: vaporware. But in the end - it all worked.
Same thing with the famous junk bonds of the 80s: they ruined people taken in by smooth words and fake visions of El Dorado and of the glittering city on the hill - but they also spawned industries that would not have sprung up otherwise.
Samewise, the rise of the internet was financed by the very useful dot com bubble of a few years ago, when countless billions were poured into the industry, thus creating and sustaining it - and ruining millions in the process, when ineluctably the bubble burst.
Nothing new there: we do have short memories, but this is exactly the way the automotive industry was created in the 1920s: vast amounts of mom and pop sourced investment monies poured in, and the industry was created on money that would not have been available but for all the piffle and the hype, then the inescapable shake-out took place, a few names survived (Ford), and the rest is history - as countless retirement swags were too.
Now that I've been the Devil's advocate - there is also terrible, terrible piffle bereft of any redeeming value. Fake business plans circulate and lay claim to extraordinary, earth-shaking, civilization-transforming innovations based on unworkable violations of the laws of Physics, which the skellums who ciculate these business plans know full well do not work but use them as vehicles to try and raise investment monies to have fun with, bet at the casinos and bedazzle the hangers-on.
Or the fellow who recently tried to sell me not the piece of luggage I wanted, but the one he scrounged the most commission off. And his spiel, Ladies and Gentlemen, now that was the most arrant piece of pathetic, pitiful, pig-headed, pijama-brains, pissant, piddling, pinheaded picayune pip-squeak spiv's piffle I had heard in a long time.
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