If something is described as "so much bunkum" (or conversely, if someone says, "What a load of bunk!"), nonsense is the order of the day. It turns out that the expression has a 19th century history. Which of course, I will share with you below....
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The Online Etymology Dictionary has this to say about bunkum/bunk:
BUNK: "nonsense," 1900, short for bunkum, phonetic spelling of Buncombe, a county in North Carolina. The usual story (attested by 1841) of its origin is this: At the close of the protracted Missouri statehood debates in the U.S. Congress, supposedly on Feb. 25, 1820, North Carolina Rep. Felix Walker (1753-1828) began what promised to be a "long, dull, irrelevant speech," and he resisted calls to cut it short by saying he was bound to say something that could appear in the newspapers in the home district and prove he was on the job. "I shall not be speaking to the House," he confessed, "but to Buncombe." Thus Bunkum has been American English slang for "nonsense" since 1841 (it is attested from 1838 as generic for "a U.S. Representative's home district").
Grammarist, Idiom Origins, Collins Dictionary, and others agree with the above. But hey! A discussion of an interesting (fanciful!) alternative history of this word's origin appears in a 2006 post on the Language Log of University of Pennsylvania. The post is titled The Bunkum of the "Bunkum of Bunkum." Fun to read, but... beware!... because.... bunkum!
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| Take note: Before 1900, it's bunkum, not bunk... Image by Prawny from Pixabay |
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