How To Use Humbug In A Sentence

From most of the preachers and all the humbugs they expect nothing else.
Massachusetts, which they called Vineland, and how the Mexican empire had some knowledge of Accadian astronomy, people are beginning to discover that Columbus himself was after all an egregious humbug. Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science
Our mean-minded monarchists really are a bunch of humourless humbugs.
The exposure and _depluming_ (to borrow a good word from the fine old rhetorician, Fuller,) of the leading 'humbugs' of the age -- _that_ was announced as the regular business of the journal: and the only question which remained to be settled was, the more or less of the degree; and also one other question, even more interesting still, viz. -- whether personal abuse were intermingled with literary. The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
It aims also to establish straightforward and honest dealings among the catteries and to do away with the humbuggery which prevails in some quarters about the sales and valuation of high-bred cats. Concerning Cats My Own and Some Others

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Other substitutions included “embrace” for “tackle,” “blucher” for “slush buster,”* “muggings” for “hog wash,” “fearful” for “rough,” “wickedest” for “vilest,” “leer” for “slobber,” “jolly” for “bully,” and “swindle” for “humbug.” Mark Twain
Is he a journalist for whom the principles of his profession override everything else, or is he a complete humbug who has lied to protect a source of information for a story which led to him winning an award for journalism?
And that despite a prolific goalscorer: Ba humbug. The Sun
A certain cant word called humbug had lately come into vogue. The Virginians
After failing in a defamation case against the West Australian newspaper - which called him a ‘lying, canting humbug’ - he left Western Australia in disgrace.
Life is all moon shine, a monstrous humbug, a grand suck - in.
In 1824, claims about a Washington widow's miracle cure were celebrated by some, called humbug by others—and sparked a debate among Catholics and Protestants. A Mixed Blessing
And while a teenager has the foresight of a flea, her powers of humbug-detection are finely honed.
He shows no signs of worry that the company he keeps may mark him as a stonking humbug.
Witch! traitress! infernal ghost! heart of ice!" and in English "humbug!" and in French Vittoria — Complete
Like many journalists, he was a curious mixture of conviction, opportunism and sheer humbug. Times, Sunday Times
But a pub in Brigg is saying ‘humbug’ to the old cliche - and hosting an early festive season in the middle of August.
Bitter bah-humbug, self-centered and short-sighted attitudes like that expressed by "Hillary or McCain" exemplify "what's wrong with the country". Obama holds big lead in Oregon
I rail at the theistic credulity of Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Epistle Dedicatory
This obesity debate is full of humbug and denial.
Yon can only humbug those who are not aware of your tricks.
Bah, humbug, I say as I scrape the mould off the rubber window seals.
I class him among what are popularly known as humbugs, however, for he is a pretender to more wisdom than he possesses. The Humbugs of the World An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages
And the sweet-shop that had been a pharmacy, so that jars of humbugs stood next to jars of belladonna.
He shows no signs of worry that the company he keeps may mark him as a stonking humbug.
Glad tidings of comfort and joy or a severe case of bah, humbug?
But I think it's time to end the annual charade of these particular exercises in vanity and humbug. Times, Sunday Times
Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Man and Superman
For humbug and hypocrisy have been high on the menu. Times, Sunday Times
Glad tidings of comfort and joy or a severe case of bah, humbug?
He said: ‘It's definitely a case of humbug on the council's part.’
Yon can only humbug those who are not aware of your tricks.
Some environmentalists agree, but many of us think it's dangerous humbug.
I presume it was for humbug and hypocrisy. The Sun
In a striking letter to The Times of 22 February 1855 he called upon the government to resist the humbug of public opinion and pull back from its over-proud and un-Christian attempt to humiliate Russia.
For humbug and hypocrisy have been high on the menu. Times, Sunday Times
It stinks of humbug, hypocrisy and double standards. The Sun
So to the critics who through your columns have scoffed at almost every proposed scheme to improve the city - especially the author of the letter who asked the last person leaving Bradford to turn off the lights - I say bah, humbug!
Necro-heckling - while its recent prominence is noteworthy - may be explained away by reference to political bitterness, sanctimonious grandstanding, ill-disguised prejudice or just plain old bah humbug Scroogery.
He's as empty as a drum, a conscious attitudinizer, a hollow pretender, a mere humbug.
I can see in their teachings nothing but humbug, untainted by any trace of truth.
That is the sort of dense-skinned ignorance which makes one unspeakably angry -- the ignorance which, because it has heard of or read a letter from some brave-hearted youngster, making light of hardships for his mother's sake, therefore flies to the conclusion that everything written and spoken about the horrors of this war is humbug, and what the Army calls "eyewash" -- a big conspiracy to deceive the people who are not there. Letters from France
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are. Desmond Tutu
The Anglican Consultative Council has issued a statement on the divestment controversy which achieves a truly egregious conflation of sanctimoniousness, disingenuousness and sheer moral humbug.
I am going to expose all this humbug.
In 1792 the feet of the deserted Cesar were well-toughened to the pavements, his shoulders to the bales, and his mind to what he called the "humbugs" of Paris. Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
In some ways the ultimate question posed by Fox News, Murdoch's career, and television's current fertile disarray is whether charlatanry is an improvement on humbug. The Murdoch Touch
Some thirty-five years ago, when I was a newcomer to the United States, an American friend adjured me to respect the meaning of the word as humbug and not to confuse it with the word for nonsense.
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are. Desmond Tutu
Pulled candy can be made from a plain sugar syrup, as in humbugs.
York is bulging at the walls with Scrooges, Grinches, crotchety crosspatches and other assorted bah humbuggers.
That the appearance of virtue makes so much money for an athlete means that humbug becomes an inevitable part of the deal. Times, Sunday Times
With coffee and humbugs, lunch tends to drift well into tea-time.
It stinks of humbug, hypocrisy and double standards. The Sun
It stinks of humbug, hypocrisy and double standards. The Sun
In other words, bah, humbug, I'm the 37,000th person to give this poorly-made bilge free publicity!
And that despite a prolific goalscorer: Ba humbug. The Sun
As for the authorities, surely there's a level of hypocrisy or humbug at the least.
Decide that twenty dollars for five hours of entertainment is reasonable value and declare that skinflints are humbugs.
The reviews were terrible, though I was personally guilty of the most atrociously contrary humbug by attempting to claim that the movie really wasn't as utterly awful as everyone was saying. Mark Kermode: How to make an intelligent blockbuster and not alienate people
In other words, bah, humbug, I'm the 37,000th person to give this poorly-made bilge free publicity!
There was no humbug or hypocrisy about Mr. Glegg; his eyes would have watered with true feeling over the sale of a widows furniture, which a five-pound note from his side pocket would have prevented; but a donation of five pounds to a person in a small way of life would have seemed to him a mad kind of lavishness rather than charity, which had always presented itself to him as a contribution of small aids, not a neutralizing of misfortune. XII. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home. Book I—Boy and Girl
It would be very easy to write another play in which quite different medical views are presented, and where will it lead us if the various treatments of tuberculosis, perhaps by the Friedmann cures, or of diphtheria, perhaps by chiropractice or osteopathy, are to be fought out on the stage until finally the editors of _Life_ would write a play around their usual thesis that the physicians are destroying mankind and that our modern medicine is humbug. Psychology and Social Sanity
For cant, humbug and moral spinelessness, this took some beating.
Humbugging cynics might wonder if this seasonal tide of volunteers is entirely altruistic or a conveniently watertight excuse for avoiding dysfunctional familial festivities.
Mrs. Harold Smith had commenced with a mind fixed upon avoiding what she called humbug; but this sort of humbug had become so prominent a part of her usual rhetoric, that she found it very hard to abandon it. Framley Parsonage
Dr. Hone went up and down the streets, loudly denouncing such "humbugs," while his partner, Lapland, laughed at the preposterous idea of learning all about materia medica in three weeks! The Right Knock A Story
One big change: undermining a custom known across Aboriginal Australia as "humbug" -- harassment, often of the elderly and of women, to share money and goods with their extended families. 'Tough Love' in the Outback
This drear December day finds Backword in curmudgeonly mood, barely able to string two words together without an epithet or at least a ‘bah’ or a ‘humbug.’
Its origin is involved in obscurity: but may it not be a corruption of the Latin _ambages_, or the singular ablative _ambage_? which signifies _quibbling, subterfuge_, and that kind of conduct which is generally supposed to constitute _humbug_. Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Oh, it was worth while to have/[Page 233]/spent four days in parsimony; to have been bitten with bugs; to have been irritated with fuss and humbug, and last of all to have been done out of my travelling expenses back! it was worth while to have had all this botheration to refresh my sense of all my mercies. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle
He even called the astute Terrapin a humbug, and toward midnight grew quarrelsome. Bohemian Days Three American Tales
Those who disclaim trifling and obvious qualities are called humbugs and are more contemptible; and sometimes this seems to be boastfulness, like the Spartan dress; for both excess and great deficiency are boastful. The NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
It would be humbug to pretend that authors at literary festivals have their minds on higher things than selling books.
Especially on winter evenings after tea, when the fire glows in the open range and dances mirrored in the steel fender, when Father, in shirt-sleeves, sits in the rocking chair at one side of the fire reading the racing finals, and Mother sits on the other with her sewing, and the children are happy with a pennorth of mint humbugs, and the dog lolls roasting himself on the rag mat. Intimate History
That the appearance of virtue makes so much money for an athlete means that humbug becomes an inevitable part of the deal. Times, Sunday Times
The derivation of humbug from the Irish uim boig ` false coin 'would provide a perfect partner, but it is, alas, groundless. VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 2
Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque 'chivalry' doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories and locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and other windy humbuggeries survive along with it. Life on the Mississippi
'That's a bit unkind,' said Pat 'After all, Sadie's kind and generous and we all like to be friends with her because of those things, not because she's well-off And Pam was a nice little thing, though she's such a swotter j m not friends with her because I want to pick her brains but because there's something rather nice about her, in spite of her head always being inside a book' 'Well, stick up for Prudence if you like,' said Janet I think she's a humbug I can't stick her goody-goody ways Can you, Bobby? ' Summer Term At St Clare's
Aniseed balls originated as digestifs; humbugs developed from medieval cold cures; liquorice was thought good for coughs.
I know they have to park somewhere I just wish it was somewhere else - pah humbug!
When black youth first began forming neighborhood cliques in the late 1940s and 1950s, neighborhood confrontations rarely turned deadly. 2 Gang fights, or "humbugs," were a fairly infrequent phenomenon but were usually stimulated by competition for access to neighborhood hangouts and recreational space. Tracy Siska: Gangs, Violent Crime, And Unintended Consequences in Chicago
The wheelchair was made of black and red licorice and the wheels were made of humbugs.
By their verdict the jury have exposed this as pure humbug. Times, Sunday Times
On the contrary, I expect to treat of various fallacies, delusions, and deceptions in ancient and modern times, which, according to Webster's definition, may be called "humbugs," inasmuch as they were "impositions under fair pretences. The Humbugs of the World An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages
In her severe cross-examination, the counsel (a very plain, if not an ugly person) observed she had frequently used the term humbug, and desired to know what she meant by it, and to {65} have an explanation; to which she replied, Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Admitting all that," said Shelton, "what I hate is the humbug with which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-called civilising methods. The Island Pharisees
Like many journalists, he was a curious mixture of conviction, opportunism and sheer humbug. Times, Sunday Times
Mrs Harold Smith had commenced with a mind fixed upon avoiding what she called humbug; but this sort of humbug had become so prominent Framley Parsonage
Those who disclaim trifling and obvious qualities are called humbugs and are more contemptible; and sometimes this seems to be boastfulness, like the The Nicomachean Ethics
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are. Desmond Tutu
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are. Desmond Tutu
We are forced to walk on what you call humbug; we put it under our feet, but we use it. Loss and Gain The Story of a Convert
The best buys include coffee beans, chocolate, mint humbugs and, of course, clotted cream shortbread.
Last week, amid the clouds of self-righteous humbug billowing out from Bali, Gordon Brown committed us to what I do not hesitate to call the maddest single decision ever made by British ministers. Archive 2007-12-01
And he a more miserable shoneen than his old crawthumping humbug of a father. Duty, and other Irish Comedies
On the other side of the water, the New York Sun called the obelisk "terrific humbug," and "only a broken, decaying and disfigured old block of stone. 'Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights'
Life is all moon shine, a monstrous humbug, a grand suck - in.
And it is noticeable that busy men, coming to art for pleasure when they are too weary for looking, listening, or thinking, so often prefer the sensation-novel, the music-hall song, and such painting as is but a costlier kind of oleograph; treating all other art as humbug, and art in general as a trifle wherewith to wile away a lazy moment, a trifle about which every man _can know what he likes best_. Laurus Nobilis Chapters on Art and Life
Sarah Palin), the audience at the first Lincoln-Douglas debate erupted with cries like "hark" and "humbug" and "hit him again. Stix Blog
The answer, it turns out, has something to do with excess humbug production and a decline in the exchange rate between bluster and bombast.
I presume it was for humbug and hypocrisy. The Sun
There was all the usual humbug and obligatory compliments from ministers.
I do not wish to pose either as a humbugging approver or as a sulky disapprover. Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3
How much humbug should a woman put up with? Times, Sunday Times
In that way one is sure of accepting no humbug.
We tossed to the fish humbugs of wool, silk, and feathers, gauds such as captivate the greedy or the guileless. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862
Or are we happy to stay at home, lock the doors and wait for it all to pass - bah, humbug!
By their verdict the jury have exposed this as pure humbug. Times, Sunday Times
Christmas shopping can turn even the most ardent yule lover into a'bah humbug' grinch. Times, Sunday Times
In classing the ghost excitement that agitated our good people to such an extent some two years ago among the "humbugs" of the age, I must, at the outset, remind my readers that there was no little accumulation of what is termed "respectable" testimony, as to the reality of his ghostship in Twenty-seventh street. The Humbugs of the World An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages
“Never tell me of your points of honour,” said Touchwood, raising his voice altogether above the general tone of polite conversation — “all humbug, Captain MacTurk — mere hair-traps to springe woodcocks — men of sense break through them.” Saint Ronan's Well
How much humbug should a woman put up with? Times, Sunday Times
a loss to know whether or not Tinah himself gave credit to this whimsical and fabulous account; for though they have credulity sufficient to believe anything, however improbable, they are at the same time so much addicted to that species of wit which we call humbug that it is frequently difficult to discover whether they are in jest or earnest. A Voyage to the South Sea For The Purpose Of Conveying The Bread-Fruit Tree To The West Indies, Including An Account Of The Mutiny On Board The Ship
I'm currently torn between a total bah-humbug mood and the desire to go out, get completely trolleyed and do something outrageous and possibly regrettable.
And that despite a prolific goalscorer: Ba humbug. The Sun
As part of her enterprise she shipped nostalgic English confection like humbugs and aniseed balls, to Navy men, tossing on the high seas.
And at last Arthur said he thought that miniature mills were really rather humbugging things, and it would be much easier and more useful to build a cold frame to keep choice auriculas and _half-hardies_ in. Mary's Meadow And Other Tales of Fields and Flowers
I mourn to know as humbugs, and the same convent parlour with its piano and the sitting round the fire, and the same supper, and the same lone night in a cell, and the same bright fresh morning when going out into the highly rarefied air was like a plunge into an icy bath. Reprinted Pieces
The wheelchair was made of black and red licorice and the wheels were made of humbugs.
He saw his way to do noble service in the cause of womanhood, and that by following the path of mere common sense -- all sentimental and so-called chivalrous humbug cast aside, all exaggerated new conceptions simply disregarded. Our Friend the Charlatan
I fear I clearly see that for years to come domestic reforms are shaken to the root; every miserable red-tapist flourishes war over the head of every protester against his humbug; and everything connected with it is pushed to such an unreasonable extent, that, however kind and necessary it may be in itself, it becomes ridiculous. The Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856
Bad information and bad guesses occasionally humbugged both, which they overcame by determination and the fighting qualities of their forces.
Yon can only humbug those who are not aware of your tricks.
As his malady increased, he would call a confessor, and, pouring into the father's credulous ear a tale of woes, sorrows, superstition and humbug, he would make the convent a donation of _all his estates in South America_, and pray for a remission of his sins! Captain Canot or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver
My brother much enjoyed humbugging his bosses, which he did with great skill for 44 years. Times, Sunday Times

How To Use Humbug In A Sentence

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