Humbug

English

Noun

Humbug (plural Humbugs)

1. A hoax, prank or jest
2. A fraud or sham
3. A fraudster or cheat
4. (UK) A type of chewy sweet (candy)

Interjection

Humbug

1. nonsense!
   • 1843, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, stave 1,

     ‘A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!’ cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

     ‘Bah!’ said Scrooge, ‘Humbug!’

Verb

Humbug (third-person singular simple present humbugs, present participle humbugging, simple past and past participle humbugged)

1. To play a trick on.
2. To cheat, swindle.

Adjectives for Humbug

solemn; intolerable; sleek; hypocritical; dishonest.

Synonyms for Humbug

counterfeit, sham, falseness, fake, feint, deception, imposition, trick, hoax, fraud, pretense, cheat, dodge, hypocrisy.

Antonyms for Humbug

truth, validity, correctness, honesty, reality.

Derived terms

• humbugger
• humbuggery

Thesaurus

absurdity, acting, affectation, amphigory, appearance, attitudinizing, babble, babblement, balderdash, balls, baloney, bamboozle, beguile, betray, bibble-babble, blabber, blague, blagueur, blather, blatherskite, bluff, bluffer, bluffing, bombast, bosh, bull, bullshit, bunk, bunkum, cajole, charlatan, charlatanism, charlatanry, cheat on, cheating, circumvent, claptrap, color, coloring, conjure, crap, deceive, deception, delude, delusion, diddle, disguise, dissemblance, dissembling, dissimulation, double-cross, double-talk, drivel, drool, dupe, eyewash, facade, face, fake, fakement, faker, fakery, faking, false air, false front, false show, falsity, feigning, feint, fiddle-faddle, fiddledeedee, flam, flapdoodle, flimflam, flummery, folderol, forestall, four-flushing, fourflusher, fraud, front, fudge, fustian, gabble, galimatias, gammon, get around, gibber, gibberish, gibble-gabble, gilt, gloss, gobbledygook, gull, gyp, hoax, hocus-pocus, hogwash, hoke, hokum, hooey, hornswaggle, humbuggery, impersonator, impostor, imposture, jabber, jargon, jiggery-pokery, juggle, let down, malarkey, malingerer, masquerade, meretriciousness, mislead, mock, moonshine, mountebank, mumbo jumbo, narrishkeit, niaiserie, nonsense, ostentation, outmaneuver, outreach, outsmart, outward show, outwit, overreach, pack of nonsense, palaver, phony, piffle, pigeon, play one false, playacting, pose, poser, poseur, posing, posture, prate, prattle, pretender, pretense, pretension, pretext, put something over, quack, quackery, quackishness, quackism, quacksalver, quackster, rant, representation, rigamarole, rigmarole, ringer, rip-off, rodomontade, rot, rubbish, saltimbanco, seeming, sell, semblance, sham, shammer, show, simulacrum, simulation, skimble-skamble, snow, speciousness, spoof, string along, stuff and nonsense, stultiloquence, take in, trash, trick, trumpery, twaddle, twattle, twiddle-twaddle, two-time, vaporing, varnish, waffling, window dressing

Etymology

First in use about 1735-40, from hum (“(dialectal and slang) to delude, impose on, cajole”) + bug (“a specter, goblin”)

Translations

Noun

hoax, prank or jest

Finnish: humpuuki (fi), huijaus (fi), pila (fi), kuje (fi)

fraud or sham

Finnish: huijaus (fi), humpuuki (fi) Hungarian: humbug (hu), átverés (hu) Italian: imbroglio (it) m.

Russian: надувательство (ru) n.

fraudster or cheat

Finnish: huijari (fi), sutki (fi)

Notes

• The spellings humbuging and humbuged exist, but are not nearly so common as humbugging and humbugged.

References

• OED 2nd edition 1989
• Humbug in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• Humbug in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

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Hungarian

Etymology

From English.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈhumbuɡ/
• Hyphenation: hum‧bug

Noun

Humbug (plural Humbugok)

1. humbug

Interjection

Humbug

1. humbug!