globaloney

English

Etymology

Blend of global ‎ baloney. Coined in 1943 by Clare Boothe Luce to disparage Vice President Henry A. Wallace's recommendation that airlines of the world be given free access to US airports.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌɡləʊbəˈləʊni/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈˌɡloʊbəˈloʊni/

Noun

globaloney (uncountable)

1. (chiefly US) Absurd or nonsensical ideas or talk on global issues.
   • 1943, Clare Boothe Luce, Congressional Record, volume 89, page 761:

     But much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney”.

   • 1950, Joseph S. Davis, “Population and Resources: Discussion of Papers by Frank W. Notestein and P. V. Cardon”, in Journal of the American Statistical Association, volume 45, number 251, page 346:

     We must beware of any form of ‘globaloney’.

   • 1988, Fraser J. Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America and the Origins of the Cold War, Oxford University Press, page 142:

     –an outlook characterised by one senior State Department official as “messianic globaloney”

   • 1995, William L. Oneill, A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II, Harvard University Press, page 197:

     Wendell Willkie's One World (1942), the epitome of “globaloney”, had sold a four million copies.

   • 2006, Michael Veseth, Globaloney: Unraveling The Myths Of Globalization, Rowman & Littlefield, page 19:

     The cheap labor threat is a common element of globaloney arguments today.

   • 2007, Patrick Buchanan, Jamestown as It Never Was, RealClearPolitics:

     Our forefathers, who created this country, rejected, totus porcus, the nonsense we spout today about egalitarianism and globaloney.

   • 2011, Michael Shermer, “Globaloney: Why the World Is Not Flat...Yet”, in Scientific American:

     In fact, this is all a bunch of “globaloney” says Pankaj Ghemawat, professor of strategic management and Anselmo Rubiralta Chair of Global Strategy at IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Barcelona, in his new book World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

   • 2017, Pankaj Ghemawat, Steven A. Altman, “Is America enriching the world at its own expense? That’s globaloney.”, in Washington Post:

     And policies rooted in overestimating globalization — “globaloney” — could harm the people they purport to protect.

Anagrams

• balenology, balneology