"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 27/11/17 (tommyrot, codswallop, jack brew, bags of mystery)

A lovely member of our studio audience ask the other day where "tommyrot" comes from, which is a slightly old-fashioned term now for complete nonsense. And English is just full of so many words to do with nonsense. You have twaddle, and you have bankum and poppycock and balderdash. And if you looked at the historical thesaurus, you would probably find 100 or 200 words, which probably reflects perhaps slightly badly on the English temperament. We had codswallop as well, which is one of big mysteries of English etymology. We think it goes back tpo Hiram Codd, who invented a special bottle to contain fizzy drinks. And because beer drinkers used to call weak beer, if you like, wallop, it was a bit of scathing criticism of what was contained in these bottles. Copswallop, perhaps, goes back to Hiram Codd. Bot to tommyrot. Tommyrot is actually a World War I term. Tommy was very much the name for your traditional generic soldier. It was used - in a very good way, it was a very, very positive way - but rot, obviously wasn't very positive. And it was bread, it was a soldiers' rations. And soldiers have a great way of pocking fun at the food, which isn't by all accounts, always particularly nice. So "jack brew", one of my favourite terms, is a cup of tea that you make for yourself but not for anyone else. Of "bags of mystery", is an old term for sausages which soldiers have adopted, because you never know what's in them. I quite like that one. And tommyrot simply was your soldiers' rations. Tommy Atkins, as I say, was a general term for an honest, private soldier, but it's as simple as it gets. It was just a rather nasty food  that you would eat out in the field by your traditional Tommy.