bunkum: [19] Buncombe is a county of North Carolina, USA. Around 1820, during a debate in the US Congress, its representative Felix Walker rose to make a speech. He spoke on – and on – and on. Fellow congressmen pleaded with him to sit down, but he refused to be deflected, declaring that he had to make a speech ‘for Buncombe’. Most of what he said was fatuous and irrelevant, and henceforth bunkum (or buncombe, as it was at first spelled) became a term for political windbagging intended to ingratiate the speaker with the voters rather than address the real issues.
It early passed into the more general sense ‘nonsense, claptrap’. Its abbreviated form, bunk, is 20th-century; it was popularized by Henry Ford’s remark ‘History is more or less bunk’, made in 1916. Of the other English words bunk, ‘bed’ [19] is probably short for bunker, which first appeared in 16th-century Scottish English, meaning ‘chest, box’; while bunk as in do a bunk and bunk off [19] is of unknown origin.
bunkum (n.)
variant of Buncombe.
双语例句
1. It's a load of bunkum.
那是一派胡言。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Juliet Hulme: Daddy says the Bibles a alluviation of bunkum!
朱丽叶·休默: 爸爸说《圣经》里是一大堆废话!
来自互联网
3. Don't believe what he's saying it's pure bunkum.