humbug

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Humbug is an old term meaning 'hoax' or 'jest'. While the term was first described in 1751 as student slang, its etymology is unknown. Its present meaning as an exclamation is closer to 'nonsense' or 'gibberish', while as a noun, a humbug refers to a fraud or impostor, implying an element of unjustified publicity and spectacle. The term is also used for certain types of candy.

In modern usage, the word is most associated with Ebenezer Scrooge, a character created by Charles Dickens. His famous reference to Christmas, "Bah! Humbug!", declaring Christmas to be a fraud, is heard afresh every year around Christmas when the versions of A Christmas Carol appear on stage or TV.^[1]

Famous Humbug of the actress/singer/manager Jenny Lind outside P. T. Barnum's New American Museum, New York City, 1850.

P. T. Barnum was a master of humbug, creating public sensations and fascination with his masterful sense of publicity. Many of his promoted exhibitions were obvious fakes, but the paying public enjoyed viewing them, either to scoff or for the wonder of them. If the word humbug enjoyed contemporary usage, it would likely be applied to supermarket tabloids and the publicity industry. A famous humbug took place on the arrival of the actress/theatre manager Jenny Lind to America, just outside the showplace of P. T. Barnum, the New American Museum, in 1850 (etching, right).

Etymology

In several East Indian dialects, the word is borrowed from English, and used to mean 'to deceive' or 'to cheat'.

In Australian Aboriginal English, humbug means 'to pester or annoy'.^{[citation needed]}

It has also existed in many other countries, unconnected with the British Empire, for a long time. For instance, in Germany it has been known since the 1830s,^[2] in Sweden since at least 1862,^[3] in French since at least 1875,^[4] in Hungarian,^[5] and in Russian.^[6]

The oldest known written uses of the word are in the book The Student (1750-1751), ii. 41, where it is called "a word very much in vogue with the people of taste and fashion." and in Ferdinando Killigrew's The Universal Jester, subtitled "a choice collection of many conceits ... bonmots and humbugs" from 1754; as mentioned in Encyclopædia Britannica from 1911, which further refers to the New English Dictionary.^[7]

There are many theories as to the origin of the term, none of which have been proven:

• Charles Godfrey Leland mentions the idea that the word could be derived from the Norse word hum, meaning 'night' or 'shadow', and the word bugges (used in the Bible), a variant of bogey, meaning 'apparitions'.^[8] The Norse word hum mentioned, or hume, actually means 'dark air' in Old Norwegian. From the other Scandinavian languages based on Old Norse, we have hüm in Icelandic which means 'twilight', hómi in Faeroese which means 'unclear', and humi in Old Swedish which means 'dark suspicion', documented back to 1541.^[9] From this word is also derived the Swedish verb hymla, still in use, which means 'to conceal, hide, not commit to the truth'.^[10]

• According to the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose, 1731-1791, to hum in English indeed originally meant 'to deceive'.^[11] To combine this early medieval Scandinavian word with bugges from the English Bible of a later date may seem far-fetched. But it is however plausible that it could have been combined with the much older Celtic word bwg, meaning 'ghost', due to the Viking conquests of the British Isles at the time, which have much influenced English. Bwg is also what developed into "bugges" in Middle English 1350-1400, then with the meaning of scarecrow or similar.^[12] This older connection makes more sense since apparently the term's origin was already unknown in 1751. Also, with bwg meaning ghost, the use of the term fits nicely in Dickens's novel about the Christmas ghosts. In Etym. Diet. of 1898, Walter Skeat also proposed a similar theory, although using contemporary versions of the words, where hum meant to murmur applause, and bug being a spectre.^[13]

• It could also come from the Italian uomo bugiardo, which literally means 'lying man'.^[14] There was considerable Italian influence on English at the time (e.g. Shakespeare's numerous Italian-based plays).

• Uim-bog is supposed to mean 'soft copper' in Irish, worthless money, but there is no evidence of a clear connection to the term.^[15]

• The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica also suggests that it is a form of "Hamburg",^[16] where false coins were minted and shipped to England during the Napoleonic wars, which is nonsense since the Napoleonic wars were 50 years after the word first appeared in print.

• A modern conception is that it actually refers to a humming bug—i.e. something small and inconsequential, such as a cicada, that makes a lot of noise.^[17]

In popular culture

• Both meanings of the term were used for comic effect in Blackadder's Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Blackadder's first line is "Humbug, humbug!", which is heard by Mr. Baldrick in the streets, making it seem as if he is in a foul mood. However, Blackadder enters his shop with a bag of sweets, saying kindly "Humbug, Mr. Baldrick?".

• In Norton Juster's book The Phantom Tollbooth, the Humbug is anthropomorphized as an insectlike character who makes grandiose claims about himself and his ancestry. ("As my great-great grandfather, George Washington Humbug used to say--")

• In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations young Pip said of old ladies and the gentleman at Miss Havisham's "... the snowplough conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs".

• Graham Cluley's computer game Humbug contains a mint humbug.

• The Little Humbugs - little people, part human, part bug, from the forest sent by Mother Nature to teach the human world that they need to start looking after the environment - are creations of children's author/illustrator Marghanita Hughes.^[18]

• In Chapter 16 of the novel The Wizard of Oz, the wizard admits, "How can I help being a humbug, when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done?"

• Near the end of film version of The Wizard of Oz, when the Wizard is exposed as a fraud, the angry Scarecrow denounces him, "You humbug!" The Wizard meekly acknowledges, "You're right, I am a humbug". The Wizard's Kansas alter ego, Professor Marvel, was also a humbug.

• Shreveport, Louisiana is home to the 2-108th Cavalry Squadron, the reconnaissances element of the 256th Infantry Brigade. Three of the squadron's four Cavalry Troops are located at 400 East Stoner Ave., in a historic armory known as "Fort Humbug" due to the Confederate Army burning logs to look like cannons and placing them along the Red River. This caused Union ironclad ships sailing north on the Red River to be tricked into turning back south.

• In an episode of The X-Files titled "Humbug", Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully visit the town of Gibsonton, Florida to investigate the strange death of a sideshow circus performer, as the town's several eccentric circus sideshow residents come under their suspicion.

• In the Christmas episode of Sheep in the Big City, General Specific often mentions this phrase. However, the "humbug" is an actual bug in this cartoon.

• In the profanity episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, the cast refers to the show as "Humbug" rather than "Bullshit" due to the subject matter.

• The much anticipated third Arctic Monkeys album will be called Humbug.

References