Bologna (pronounced buh-LON-yuh) is the Italian city; bologna (or bologna sausage) is the large sausage named for the city and pronounced buh-LON-ee, buh-LON-yuh, or buh-LON-uh. Baloney and boloney are Americanized variant spellings of the name of the sausage and widely used in the relatively long-standing slang noun and retort meaning “nonsense, foolishness"