Now and then difficulties are presented in stating the sources and original meanings of some of our words, especially, as here, of words which through use in a different sense have become completely respectable in our language.
Thus, in America, poppycock is merely an equivalent of “stuff and nonsense; bosh,” but among the Dutch ancestors of some of us or by a present-day Netherlander the original form, pappekak, would never be used in polite society.
In euphemistic terms: soft ordure.
