humbug

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The derivation of humbug from the Irish uim boig ` false coin 'would provide a perfect partner, but it is, alas, groundless.

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Definitions (20)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (7)

  1. noun Something intended to deceive; a hoax or fraud.
  2. noun A person who claims to be other than what he or she is; an impostor.
  3. noun Nonsense; rubbish.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (7)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (4)

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Examples

  • The pillorying of a humbug is so laudable an object that the reader will excuse the digression, which, moreover, may show what miserable instruments a poor biographer has sometimes to make use of. —  Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician
  • The story looks very much like a humbug, but it was told with all seriousness by a respectable looking man. —  Memoirs of 30 Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers
  • The derivation of humbug from the Irish uim boig ` false coin 'would provide a perfect partner, but it is, alas, groundless. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 2
  • Horty finished the transaction with a kid who looked no older than twelve, slapped him five, headed west. —  Deal Breaker
  • But all that last is mere humbug--humbug, too, of the lowest and most foolish order--I never hear a man droning about the cruelty of field sports, but I set him down, on the spot, either as a hypocrite or a fool, and probably a glorious union of the two. —  Warwick Woodlands Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago
 

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Humbug has been looked up 255 times, favorited once, listed 25 times, and commented on 4 times.

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

imposture ·  hypocrite ·  hypocrisy ·  impostor ·  deceit ·  quackery ·  nonsense ·  swindler ·  liar ·  snob ·  cad ·  fraud
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Origin unknown.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. First in use about 1735–40, as a piece of fashionable slang, with exactly its present sense; but Dean Milles defines it (about 1760) as ‘a false alarm, a bugbear,’ apparently a more orig. sense; from hum, a dial. and slang term, delude, impose on, cajole, + bug, a specter, goblin (see hum and bug); but, as in other slang terms, little regard was paid to the elements of which it is formally composed. The use of humbug in ref. to a person is more recent; cf. fraud, similarly used in colloquial speech.
  2. from humbug, n.
 

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/ˈhəmbəg/
by American Heritage

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