"bunkum" meaning in English

See bunkum in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈbʌŋkəm/ Audio: en-us-bunkum.ogg [US] Forms: bunkums [plural]
Etymology: From buncombe, from “speaking to (or for) Buncombe County, North Carolina”, a county in North Carolina named for Edward Buncombe. In 1820, Felix Walker, who represented the county in the U.S. House of Representatives, rose to address the question of admitting Missouri as a free or slave state, his first attempt to speak on the subject after nearly a month of solid debate, right before the vote was to be called. To the exasperation of colleagues, he began a long and wearisome speech, explaining that he was speaking not to Congress but "to Buncombe." He was ultimately shouted down by his colleagues, though his speech was published in a Washington paper and his persistence made "buncombe" (later respelled "bunkum") a synonym for meaningless political claptrap and later for any kind of nonsense, at first only in the jargon of Washington and then in common usage (see discussion on talk page). Etymology templates: {{m|en|buncombe}} buncombe, {{l|en|Buncombe County}} Buncombe County Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} bunkum (countable and uncountable, plural bunkums)
  1. (slang, countable) Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense. Tags: countable, slang Synonyms: nonsense
    Sense id: en-bunkum-en-noun-Yg9YKBny
  2. (politics) Bombastic political posturing or oratorical display designed only for show or public applause. Tags: countable, uncountable Categories (topical): Politics
    Sense id: en-bunkum-en-noun-0aIZ4eNP Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 4 96 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 4 96 Topics: government, politics
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: buncombe Derived forms: bunk, debunk, hokum

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for bunkum meaning in English (3.2kB)

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  "derived": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "bunk"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "debunk"
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    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
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  "etymology_templates": [
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  "etymology_text": "From buncombe, from “speaking to (or for) Buncombe County, North Carolina”, a county in North Carolina named for Edward Buncombe. In 1820, Felix Walker, who represented the county in the U.S. House of Representatives, rose to address the question of admitting Missouri as a free or slave state, his first attempt to speak on the subject after nearly a month of solid debate, right before the vote was to be called. To the exasperation of colleagues, he began a long and wearisome speech, explaining that he was speaking not to Congress but \"to Buncombe.\" He was ultimately shouted down by his colleagues, though his speech was published in a Washington paper and his persistence made \"buncombe\" (later respelled \"bunkum\") a synonym for meaningless political claptrap and later for any kind of nonsense, at first only in the jargon of Washington and then in common usage (see discussion on talk page).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bunkums",
      "tags": [
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  "head_templates": [
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  "hyphenation": [
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "glosses": [
        "Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense."
      ],
      "id": "en-bunkum-en-noun-Yg9YKBny",
      "links": [
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        "(slang, countable) Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense."
      ],
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        "Bombastic political posturing or oratorical display designed only for show or public applause."
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        "(politics) Bombastic political posturing or oratorical display designed only for show or public applause."
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  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈbʌŋkəm/"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "buncombe"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-bunkum.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3f/En-us-bunkum.ogg/En-us-bunkum.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/En-us-bunkum.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
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      "text": "Audio (US)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "buncombe"
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Edward Buncombe"
  ],
  "word": "bunkum"
}
{
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    "English nouns",
    "English terms derived from toponyms",
    "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English terms with homophones",
    "English uncountable nouns"
  ],
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "bunk"
    },
    {
      "word": "debunk"
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    {
      "word": "hokum"
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  "etymology_templates": [
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        "1": "en",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
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        "English countable nouns",
        "English slang"
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        "Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense."
      ],
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        "(slang, countable) Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense."
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      "synonyms": [
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          "word": "nonsense"
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      "tags": [
        "countable",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(politics) Bombastic political posturing or oratorical display designed only for show or public applause."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ],
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        "government",
        "politics"
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      "ipa": "/ˈbʌŋkəm/"
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      "audio": "en-us-bunkum.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3f/En-us-bunkum.ogg/En-us-bunkum.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/En-us-bunkum.ogg",
      "tags": [
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  "wikipedia": [
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  "word": "bunkum"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.