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Podcast: Word of the Day
Episode: Bunkum
Description: Bunkum is a noun that refers to nonsense.
Our word of the day came to life after a mid-19th century speech that referred to a county in North Carolina called Buncombe. The speech was apparently made solely to please a politician’s constituents, so the word stuck and was later changed to its current form.
Example: We all got a feeling that the governor’s speech was bunkum when he started trotting out dubious numbers. But things got even more questionable when he made up names to support those bogus facts.