Empty or insincere talk; claptrap.
[After Buncombe, a county of western North Carolina, from a remark made around 1820 by its congressman, who felt obligated to give a dull speech “for Buncombe”.]
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Empty or insincere talk; claptrap.
[After Buncombe, a county of western North Carolina, from a remark made around 1820 by its congressman, who felt obligated to give a dull speech “for Buncombe”.]
noun
A congressman from western North Carolina was so mindful of the voters in his home county that he inadvertently made its name a household word. It was the Honorable Felix Walker, Representative from the county that includes Asheville, North Carolina, who in 1819 (or perhaps 1820) justified his longwinded remarks on the nearly deserted House floor by saying that his constituents had elected him "to make a speech for Buncombe."
That was all it took. Evidently the country was in need of a word more colorful than nonsense for the rantings and ramblings of politicians and boosters. With the disrespectfully simplified spelling bunkum, the word soon established itself in the jargon of politics. "Talking to Bunkum!" exclaimed an article in 1828. "This is an old and common saying at Washington, when a member of congress is making one of those humdrum and unlistened to 'long talks' which have lately become so fashionable."
Meanwhile, there came into existence around the same time another bunkum meaning just the opposite: "excellent, outstanding." Starting in 1834, we find bunkum candy and cakes, a Buncombe fence, and a bunkum politician--supposedly a first-rate one. These two opposite meanings for one word made it exceptionally useful by allowing a speaker to damn with seeming praise.
Later developments accentuated the negative implications of the word. In the 1870s, a San Francisco gambler introduced a new game with the Spanish name banco. When it was discovered that the banco dice were loaded, the first vowel was humorously changed to suggest an affinity with bunkum. Soon enough bunco came to stand for any kind of swindle.
By 1900 a further shortening had reduced bunkum to modern bunk, ready for application to the plentiful nonsense of the twentieth century, as in Henry Ford's famous "History is bunk." And in 1923 the author of a book about bunk felt the need to coin a word for getting rid of it: debunk.
Bunkum is an alternate spelling of Buncombe, also sometimes shortened to bunk. It is also a term which, by 1828, had come into general use in political Washington to mean speechmaking designed for show or public applause. It is now more usually used to mean nonsense or humbug. The process of disproving and perhaps ridiculing bunkum is called debunking.
In the sixteenth Congress, on February 25, 1820, before the U.S. House of Representatives, Representative Felix Walker from Buncombe County, North Carolina gave a rambling speech upon the Missouri question with little relevance to the concurrent debate. Walker refused to yield the floor, informing his colleagues that his speech was not intended for Congress, but that he was "speaking for Buncombe." It became a widely-retold joke in Washington, and the word was used to refer to any bombastic political posturing or an oratorical display not accompanied by conviction.
The term was later adopted in the United Kingdom.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Dansk (Danish)
n. - nonsens, vrøvl, sludder
Français (French)
n. - fadaises, blagues, histoires
Deutsch (German)
n. - (ugs.) Unsinn
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (καθομ.) φούμαρα, μπουρδολογίες
Italiano (Italian)
sciocchezze
Português (Portuguese)
n. - promessas (f pl) políticas, conversa (f) fiada (gír. bras.)
Español (Spanish)
n. - tonterías
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - prat, humbug
中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
博取欢心的演说, 废话
中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 博取歡心的演說, 廢話
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) تخريف, هراء
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