The heyday of “malarkey” on the pages of The Post came in the 1980s. That data shows that use of “malarkey” spiked in books in the 1980s, just as it did in The Post. Biden uses the more popular -ey spelling, perhaps a reflection of his embrace of it during its 1980s renaissance. He’s the guy who called Republican ideas “malarkey” and he’s the guy who uses terms like “malarkey” because he’s old and centered and willing to use normal-guy terms like “malarkey” even if that is abnormal. Some of the earliest uses of “malarkey” in the New York Times were references to Irish Americans who bore that last name.

Source: Washington Post December 02, 2019 21:11 UTC