Poppycock; or, Grice's Eschatology Revisited

for the Grice Circle

For some reason, Chapman (I love her) cannot spell 'eschatology', as spelt (spelled?) by Grice. She spells it 'scatology', I _think_.

In any case, there's poppycock.

A classicist I knew derived this from the Grecian word for 'north': The Greeks pointed to the north, the Romans to the south -- hence 'dexter'.

Quinion disagrees:

"This is a red herring."

"The direct association, her, is with "cack", a fine Old English term, for excrement or dung."

""Cac-hus" was OE for a privy, and both words come from L. "cacare", to defecate.""

Unfortunately, the Oxford Etymological Dictionary fails to give 'cack' an
OE pedigree, alas.

For Onions, it's only 'XV'. "prob. from Middle Low German, MDu cacken (Du kakken), corr. to G. kacken, etc.", via Latin, from

IE *kak- (cognate with Irish 'cacaim').

'Cacare' is neither, alas, listed in the otherwise rather complete glossary of Latin loan-words in Alistair Campbell's _Old English Grammar_ (ch. x, sections B-C).

So here's another OED gap (The other one was for 'implicature' as pointed out quoting me by Horn in ADS-L).

How widespread was the Anglo-Saxon privy, then? And is it listed, say, in
the Doomsday Book then?

No, it's not.

But King Alfred, then, never used 'cacophony':

Weird Words: Cacography
... of cacophony, "bad noises" (despite the association of ideas, it has
nothing to
do with our cack-handed, which derives from Old English cack, "excrement").
...
http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-cac1.htm

Weird Words: Poppycock
... The first half of the word is closely related to our pap for infants'
soft food;
the second half is essentially the same as the old English cack for
excrement ...
http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-pop1.htm

xrefer - Hand
... Hand. [From Old English]. (1) One ... hygiene. The BrE dialect term
cack-handed
for 'left-handed' derives from cack excrement. Because ...
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/442306

Etc.