My etymology of hogwash is not . . . oh, you know where I’m leading . . .
What’s the source of the word hogwash? Cleaning pigs? Spraying them down? Giving them a nice bubble bath and perhaps a pedicure (would that be a hooficure?)
Hogwash!
The wash in hogwash is what is washed out—in this sense, washed out of kitchens or other places of consumable preparation, including breweries (in other words, garbage and scraps and such), and fed to the hogs. By the 1700s, the term was used to describe any hog-sloppy liquor, and extended to other sorts of inferior things (such as this book, some of you are thinking). The word took further figurative use to eventually become synonymous with slang baloney!, which comes from balogna, which is usually made from, um . . . hogs well-washed (hopefully in both senses of the word).