bunkum
Plural: bunkums
Noun
- Empty, insincere talk; nonsense or humbug.
- unacceptable behavior (especially ludicrously false statements)
- Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense.
- Bombastic political posturing or oratorical display designed only for show or public applause.
Examples
- The opponent’s excuses for not playing a seven-letter word were pure BUNKUM.
Origin / Etymology
From buncombe, from “speaking to (or for) Buncombe County, North Carolina”, a county in North Carolina named for Edward Buncombe. In 1820, Felix Walker, who represented the county in the U.S. House of Representatives, rose to address the question of admitting Missouri as a free or slave state, his first attempt to speak on the subject after nearly a month of solid debate, right before the vote was to be called. To the exasperation of colleagues, he began a long and wearisome speech, explaining that he was speaking not to Congress but "to Buncombe." He was ultimately shouted down by his colleagues, though his speech was published in a Washington paper and his persistence made "buncombe" (later respelled "bunkum") a synonym for meaningless political claptrap and later for any kind of nonsense, at first only in the jargon of Washington and then in common usage (see discussion on talk page).
Synonyms
buncombe, bunk, guff, hogwash, rot, BS, Bandini, Greek, Irish bull, absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, applesauce, bafflegab, balderdash, balls, baloney, banana oil, baragouin, batcrap, batshit, bilgewater, blah, blather, blatherskite, bobbins, bollocks, bosh, bull, bull feathers, bullcrap, bulldust, bullshit, bullspeak, bunkum, bushwah, clamjamfrey, claptrap, cobblers, codswallop, crap, crock, crock of shit, double Dutch, double talk, doublespeak, drivel, eyewash, fiddle-faddle, flapdoodle, flim-flam, flizz, flummery, folderol, foolishness, footle, framis, fuckery, fuckry, fudge, galimatias, garbage, garble, gibber, gibberish, gobbledygook, gossip, grandstanding, gup, hoax, hocus-pocus, hokum, hooey, horse hockey, horse piss, horse puckey, horsefeathers, horseshit, humbug, jabber, jargon, jibber-jabber, jimjam, jive, junk, lallation, macaroni, malarkey, manure, meaninglessness, moonshine, mumbo jumbo, nertz, nonsense, pie in the sky, piffle, pigswill, poppycock, prattle, put-on, rhubarb, rhubarb rhubarb, rigmarole, rubbish, ruse, santorum, shit, shite, skimble-skamble, squit, stuff, stuff and nonsense, tommy-rot, tosh, trash, tripe, tush, twaddle, wass, whiff-whaff, word salad
Scrabble Score: 14
bunkum: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordbunkum: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
bunkum: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary