humbug

Meaning

Noun

1. (countable, slang) A hoax, jest, or prank.
2. (countable, slang) A fraud or sham; (uncountable) hypocrisy.
3. (countable, slang) A cheat, fraudster, or hypocrite.
4. (slang, uncountable) Nonsense.
5. (British, countable) A type of hard sweet (candy), usually peppermint flavoured with a striped pattern.
6. (US, countable, slang) Anything complicated, offensive, troublesome, unpleasant or worrying; a misunderstanding, especially if trivial.
7. (US, countable, slang) A fight.
8. (US, countable, dated, slang) A gang.
9. (US, countable, slang) A false arrest on trumped-up charges.
10. (countable, slang) The piglet of the wild boar.

Intj

Balderdash!, nonsense!, rubbish!

Verb

1. (slang) To play a trick on someone, to cheat, to swindle, to deceive.
2. (US, slang) To fight; to act tough.
3. (obsolete, slang) To waste time talking.

Synonyms

hoax

fraud

deception

cheat

sham

swindler

imposture

impostor

dissimulation

delusion

deceit

trick

gammon

pretence

dupery

tommyrot

tosh

swindle

snake oil

con

drivel

trickster

twaddle

baloney

fraudulence

deceiver

bilk

dissembler

bilgewater

trickery

humbuggery

deceive

scam

pretender

nonsense

put-on

taradiddle

imposition

claptrap

bosh

hypocrite

imposter

boloney

hoodwink

eyewash

spoof

cheating

drool

fudge

gyp

Translations

Humbug

farsa

imbroglio

hile

απάτη

raggiro

supercherie

bedrog

fraude

duperie

frode

abbindolamento

ipocrisia

tromperie

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈhʌmbʌɡ/

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.