Blatherskite was used on Ducktales to activate a mechanical super suit.

http://darkwingduck.wikia.com/wiki/Gizmoduck

that's where I heard it first clearly as a kid (although according to my mom it would come out of my grandfathers mouth as part of a stream of invective that would turn the air cerulean).

with soldiers in the Revolutionary War. It was originally Scottish, I believe


Don't feel old -

I used to watch Ducktails . . .

with MY kids!

...so thank you for this addition.

It's origins:

is this Big Tony Scales (Antonin Scalia)?

... in Frederick Lewis Allen's book Only Yesterday, which I had to read for a college history class. In that book, Allen wrote of that great iconoclastic newspaperman and editor of the Mercury, HL Mencken:

"When Mencken visited Dayton to report the Scopes trial and called the Daytonians yokels, hillbillies, and peasants, the Reverend A. C. Stribling replied that Mencken was 'a cheap blatherskite of a pen pusher;' and to such retorts there was a large section of outraged public opinion ready to cry Amen. After a few years so much abuse had been heaped upon the editor of the Mercury that it was possible to publish for the delectation of his admirers a Schimpflexicon -- a book made up entirely of highly uncomplimentary references to him."

You can't make up great words like this, I mean, Schimpflexicon, blatherskite, delectation. I live for stuff like this.

"She's trying to defamate my character"