Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. nonsense, foolishness, ‘messing about’.

[1894		Truth (Sydney) 25 Nov. 7/3: Captain Mullurky [sic] (melodious name for military muddle, apparently perpetrated for a malicious ‘lark’) [...] Captain Stack, many years the Mullarky man’s senior].
1924		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 57: Malachy — you said it.
c.1930		(con. 1878) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 145: ‘Your a pretty wonderful man, Kon.’ That was the malarky you gave your favourite john.
1937		F. Gruber ‘Death on Eagle’s Crag’ in Goulart (1967) 177: What’s that – a bit of malarkey? You got plenty of it.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 139: Leave me out of this malarkey, laddie.
1950		P. Hoskins No Hiding Place! 191/1: Malarkey. False story.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 145: Much has been written about San Francisco’s Chinatown. And most of it is pure malarkey.
1955		Mad mag. May 6: That Simple J. Baloney is jus’ a lot o’ malarkey!
1955		B. Appel Tough Guy [ebook] The Spotter only laughed and said it was all mullarkey.
1956		B. Behan Quare Fellow (1960) Act I: That’s a lot of mullarkey.
1959		M. Richler Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1964) 278: That’s the kind of malarky you can hear on the radio any Sunday morning.
1962		S. Longstreet Flesh Peddlers (1964) 281: ‘What malarkey,’ said A.K.
1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 12: Any more of that malarkey and I’ll be tempted [...] to fit you with a mouthful of knuckles.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 28: ‘Now that,’ interrupted Blue, ‘sounds to me like a bit of the old mullarkey. No family could eat a heifer for dinner.’.
1971		T. Thackrey Thief 213: And nothing would do but I should stop and all that malarkey.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 73: He’d bunged me a load of old mallarky.
1986		J. Sullivan ‘From Prussia With Love’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] You seem to know a lot about this medical malarkey!
1989		S. Armitage ‘Ivory’ in Zoom 74: No more mularkey, no baloney.
1998		Guardian 23 Oct. 16: He [...] types in all this Spanish mullarkey.
1998		K. Sampson Awaydays 117: Spare me the protective older brother mularkey!
1999		Indep. Rev. 23 July 7: More touring and malarky.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 26: Why didn’t you tell us about the two-set malarkey?
2000		Indep. Rev. 6 Jan. 13: There’s still a lot of dead air among the tried-and-tested malarkey.
2001		N. Tosches Where Dead Voices Gather (ms.) 58: A bizarre malarkey of the soul that seemed a death-cry and a birth-cry too.
2006		G. Malkani Londonstani (2007) 106: If that’s how easy this fightin malarkey is then even I could fuckin do it.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 61: Any malarkey, it alters the controllers.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘You becomink a spy perhaps, mister Jack?’ ‘Nah, fuck that malarky’.
2021		C. Hammer Opal Country 207: ‘[A] whole lot of malarkey about how the kid was in heaven’.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 158: [A] very mild, very modest ceremony. No filth, none of the usual perverted malarkey.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

2007

T. Dorsey Hurricane Punch 131: The malarkey factor has been pushing me away ever since the nuns.

3. a fool.

1946		J.E. Dadswell Hey, Sucker 197: Those melarkeys [sic] thought my outfit was the girl show.
1999		Indep. Rev. 19 Nov. 16: A crazy, shuffling malarkey like Harry Partch.

4. an un-named gadget or system.

2019

M. Herron Joe Country [ebook] Do we still have that face recognition malarkey?