Bunkum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bunkum is an alternate spelling of Buncombe, also sometimes shortened to bunk, and is 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.
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 adopted in England.
[edit] References
- Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940
- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
Bunk, a shortened version of bunkum, is also used as a slang to mean the same thing. To disprove and perhaps ridicule bunk is called debunking.
