When Virgin Records released the album Never Mind the Bollocks: Here’s the Sex Pistols, the owner of a record shop in Nottingham was prosecuted for obscenity after displaying a poster, despite warnings to take it down.
His defence was conducted by John Mortimer BL and Geoffrey Roberston QC. They called James Kinsley, professor of linguistics, as an expert witness:
“Professor Kinsley was reported as telling the court that the word [bollocks] had been used in records dating back to the year 1,000 AD with the word meaning ‘small ball’ in Anglo Saxon times. He said it appeared in medieval bibles and veterinary books and had been used in the bible to describe small things of an appropriate shape. Professor Kinsley is also said to have made reference to the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by the noted lexicographer of the English language, Eric Partridge in putting forward a further explanation that the word was used colloquially through the centuries including as a nickname for clergymen, as in the notion that clergymen sometimes talked a lot of ‘nonsense’ in their sermons.”
More of this at the University of Nottingham’s web site: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/English/News/University-helps-Virgin-out-of-a-Branson-pickle.aspx