n nonsense. The etymology of this antiquated but superb word leads us to an English gentleman named Hiram Codd, who in 1872 came up with the idea of putting a marble and a small rubber ring just inside the necks of beer bottles in order to keep fizzy beer fizzy (“wallop” being Old English for beer). The idea was that the pressure of the fizz would push the marble against the ring, thereby sealing the bottle. Unfortunately, the thing wasn’t nearly as natty as he’d hoped and “Codd’s wallop” slid into the language first as a disparaging comment about flat beer and eventually as a general term of abuse.