Balderdash & Piffle Wordhunt

Your language needs you!

Did you wear a shell-suit before 1989 or call someone a wazzock before 1984? Do you know anyone who is daft as a brush, and why you might describe them this way?

In conjunction with the second series of the BBC's Balderdash & Piffle, the OED invited readers once again to hunt for words and help rewrite 'the greatest book in the English language'.

250 years after Dr Johnson wrote his celebrated dictionary with the aid of just six helpers, the BBC and the Oxford English Dictionary teamed up to appeal to the nation to help solve some of the most intriguing recent word mysteries in the language.

The OED seeks to find the earliest verifiable usage of every single word in the English language—currently 600,000 in the OED and counting—and of every separate meaning of every word. Quite a task! The words on the OED's Balderdash & Piffle Wordhunt appeal list have dates indicating the earliest evidence the dictionary currently had for that word or phrase. Could they be trumped? Use the links below to find out more and see the results the series brought in.

Appeal list

* means origin unknown or origin uncertain

• bananas (1968-70)*
• Bloody Mary (1956)*
• bonkers (1957)*
• bung (1958)*
• daft/mad as a brush (1945)
• dog and bone (1961)
• dogging
• dog's bollocks (1989)
• domestic (1963)
• duh brain
• flip-flop (1970)
• glamour model (1981)
• Glasgow kiss (1987)
• Gordon Bennett
• hoodie (1990)
• identity theft (1991)
• Jack the Lad (1981)*
• kinky (1959)
• loo (1940)*
• marital aid (1976)
• mucky pup (1984)
• one sandwich short (1993)
• plonker (1966)
• pole dance (1992)
• prat (1968)*
• regime change (1990)
• round robin
• shaggy dog story (1946)*
• shell-suit (1989)
• sick puppy
• spiv (1934)*
• stiletto (1959)
• take the mickey (1948)*
• tosser (1977)
• trainer (1978)
• twoc (1990)
• wally (1969)*
• wazzock (1984)*
• whoopsie (1973)
• wolf-whistle (1952)