Definition of HUMBUG

humbug

Plural: humbugs

Noun

  • pretentious or silly talk or writing
  • communication (written or spoken) intended to deceive
  • something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage
  • A hoax, jest, or prank.
  • A fraud or sham; (uncountable) hypocrisy.
  • A cheat, fraudster, or hypocrite.
  • Nonsense.
  • A type of hard sweet (candy), usually peppermint flavoured with a striped pattern.
  • Anything complicated, offensive, troublesome, unpleasant or worrying; a misunderstanding, especially if trivial.
  • A fight.
  • A gang.
  • A false arrest on trumped-up charges.
  • The piglet of the wild boar.

Verb

Verb Forms: humbugged, humbugging, humbugs

  • To deceive or trick someone, often with false pretenses.
  • trick or deceive
  • To play a trick on someone, to cheat, to swindle, to deceive.
  • To fight; to act tough.
  • To waste time talking.

Intj

  • Balderdash!, nonsense!, rubbish!

Examples

  • Don’t try to humbug me with a fake word; I’ll challenge it every time in Words With Friends.

Origin / Etymology

Origin unknown; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that “the facts as to its origin appear to have been lost, even before the word became common enough to excite attention”. It has been suggested that the word possibly derives from hummer (“(slang) An obvious lie”), or from hum (“(dialectal and slang) to cajole; delude; impose on”) + bug (“a goblin, a spectre”). In his Slang Dictionary (1864), English bibliophile and publisher John Camden Hotten (1832–1873) suggested a link to the name of the German city of Hamburg, “from which town so many false bulletins and reports came during the war in the last century”, or alternatively a derivation from ambage.
Hotten also said he had traced the earliest occurrence of the word to the title page of Ferdinando Killigrew’s book The Universal Jester (see quotations), which he dated to about 1735–1740. This dating has therefore been adopted by other dictionaries. However, the OED dates the word to about 1750, as the earliest edition of Killigrew’s work has been dated to 1754.

Scrabble Score: 14

humbug: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
humbug: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
humbug: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 18

humbug: valid Words With Friends Word