1
a
: something designed to deceive and mislead
Their claims are humbug.
b
: a willfully false, deceptive, or insincere person
He's just an old humbug.
denounced as humbugs the playwrights who magnify the difficulties of their craft—
Times Literary Supplement
Times Literary Supplement2
: an attitude or spirit of pretense and deception
in all his humbug, in all his malice and hollowness—Mary Lindsay
Mary Lindsay4
British
: a hard usually peppermint-flavored candy
humbugged; humbugging
: to engage in a hoax or deception
Synonyms
Noun
Verb
Examples of humbug in a Sentence
Noun
tests showed that the “old” map of America was a cleverly made humbug
those UFO stories are a lot of humbug
Verb
humbugged into believing that the bones were the skeleton of a prehistoric human being
Recent Examples on the Web
Grrlscientist, Forbes, 30 Sep. 2024
Fields' Wizard would've been more of a con-man while Morgan played him as a frightened little humbug.
—Jeff Labrecque, EW.com, 17 June 2024
Elizabeth Wolfe and Douglas S. Wood, CNN, 21 Dec. 2019
See all Example Sentences for humbug 
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Noun
These small marine reef fish are often known by the peculiar common name, the humbug damselfish (Figure 1).
—Grrlscientist, Forbes, 30 Sep. 2024
Fields' Wizard would've been more of a con-man while Morgan played him as a frightened little humbug.
—Jeff Labrecque, EW.com, 17 June 2024
Verb
In its verb form, to be humbugged is to be deceived or be the victim of a hoax.
—Elizabeth Wolfe and Douglas S. Wood, CNN, 21 Dec. 2019
See all Example Sentences for humbug
Dictionary Entries Near humbug
Cite this Entry
“Humbug.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humbug. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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