January 25, 2000

horsefeathers

What the Dickens? Could you please tell me where "awh horsefeathers" comes from?

Nonsense! Lies! Horsefeathers! The most obvious derivation of this slang term is probably the correct one-it's a euphemism for horseshit. (Other euphemisms, if you prefer, are horse hockey, horseradish, and horse hooey.) On a continuum of offensiveness, dictionaries tend to label horseshit as more contemptuous than bullshit, so choose your terms accordingly.

So horsefeathers is a euphemism. But why "feathers"? Probably because a horse with feathers is an incongruous or unbelievable sight. I guess the term "horsewings" didn't fly.

The term horsefeathers didn't originate with the Marx Brothers. Their classic comedy Horse Feathers was released in 1932, about five years after the slang use was first recorded in print. The American cartoonist William ("Billy") De Beck claimed credit for its coinage. De Beck also claimed credit for the term heebie-jeebies and a few other words, prompting the journalist Walter Winchell to refer to De Beck as "...my tutor of the slanguage he helped me perfect...."

An (improbable) origin of horsefeathers is discussed in Charles Earle Funk's Horsefeathers and Other Curious Words (1958). Funk was the editor-in-chief of the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary Series. As he relates in the book's Foreword, a carpenter gave him the following advice on renovating his Vermont farmhouse: "Seems if 'bout the only thing ye kin do is to rip off all them clapbuds. If they wa'n't so old an' curled up, ye moight put horsefeathers over 'em, and then cover yer hoose with asphalt shingles...." So, to a carpenter in New York or New England, horsefeathers were tapered boards laid on wood shingle roofs to provide a flat surface over which asphalt shingles could be laid in re-roofing. Funk explains: "Perhaps the successive layers of new wood reminded one...of the feathers on the wings of a chicken, except as to size. Relatively, then, they were feathers fit for a horse." Since these boards were also called feathering strips,the original term might logically have been housefeathers, (mispronounced as horsefeathers), but this is not supported by written evidence. As for the derivation of the slang sense, Funk concluded that "...some bright chap heard the term used by an upstate builder, cleverly told the tale in a New York speakeasy of the period, and that 'Horsefeathers!' was then picked up by doubting Thomases and used thereafter to greet any incredible statement."

Carol