Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
Just for fun, let's look at the Longman dictionary this time around. When I teach vocabulary and when I scientifically study words with students, I start with meaning to anchor the word in the students' minds. If we don't know what a word means and how it functions, then it will not be assimilated into our lexicon. And if we look up a definition in a dictionary and it doesn't make sense, it won't be helpful. Therefore, I often use the Collins dictionary (which I learned of long ago) as a great source of student-friendly definitions.
The Longman serves this job as well. As we turn to the entry for malarkey there, it says it is "things you think are silly or untrue." It also has the notation "informal" just before the entry. This might give us a chance to talk about register. An informal word is not going to be a word to use in an academic setting. However, it works out great in everyday conversation. The Longman also uses examples from a corpus. They even give us the phrase "and all that malarkey."
Longman tells us this word is an "uncountable noun." Students I've worked with say nouns are "people, places, and things," and while that's true, I also teach various ways to insure a word is a noun. One way is if it can be pluralized, or counted. Many nouns can:
apple/apples
wish/wishes
penny/pennies
knife/knives
Some cannot. Like malarkey.
Another way you can test if a word is a noun or not is to see if it can immediately follow an article like the.
That sounds like the malarkey my Grandpa tells us about walking to school in the snow, uphill, both ways.
