regard all this as codswallop.'' A year later, in a piece on the individualism of the Australian, the magazine asked, ''A load of generalised sociological codswallop?''

Assessing a Turkish argument for refusing concessions on Cyprus, a special Economist correspondent in New York wrote in 1975: ''The Greeks. The Economist, a magazine not noted for its salaciousness, uses it all the time. My colleague asked: '' 'A load of codswallop.' I have a clear enough picture of the meaning intended, but Merriam-Webster's Third Unabridged does not acknowledge the existence of such a colorful expression. Savor it as the eulogists say, we shall not soon see its like again.) The clipping on the Archaeopteryx (say ''arky opterix'' - the name means ''ancient wing'') controversy was sent to me by John Noble Wilford, a science correspondent of The New York Times and possessor of the classiest name in journalism today. They're just not writing leads like that anymore. Charig of the British Museum of Natural History, in London, told New Scientist magazine: ''We think the suggestion that it's a fake is a load of codswallop.'' (That is a classic lead sentence.

FACED WITH A charge by Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astrophysicist, that the fossil known as Archaeopteryx - whose reptilian bones adorned with beautifully preserved feathers suggest a link between reptiles and birds - is a fake, Alan J.

Duly noted slang