humbug

Spoto’s work is not fully dismissed, but he’s often thought of as something of an academic humbug.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026

As usual, they’re backing their promise with lies and other humbug.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2024

If holiday clutter has you more bah humbug than merry, these tips from professional organizers around Seattle might make your life easier before and after the holidays, and well into the new year.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 15, 2023

However, far from feeling bah humbug about having to do their job while on holiday, they all love being able to take the stress and strain away from others.

From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2022

From their ranks at Corinthian Hall, Wednesday night’s audience selected a five-man committee to test Maggie and Leah and decide whether the rappings were a humbug.

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock

“He used these humbugs, as he called them, to create excitement and bring people in,” Wilson says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 25, 2026

Joined by his wife Katie, he plunges into another assignment, as he tries to get the "spirit of Christmas" back from the dastardly humbugs.

From BBC ● Nov. 13, 2024

In Poe’s lifetime, a handful of well-connected American scientists advanced plans to build national institutions to distinguish “real working men in the way of science” from charlatans, quacks, and humbugs.

From Slate ● Aug. 2, 2021

Chronicling the history of such fakers as Smelcer, Young offers a long history of the hoax, beginning with a series of famous humbugs from P. T. Barnum’s sideshow.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 9, 2017

A reporter crowed, “It has become a settled fact that Burr’s and the Buffalo doctors’ theories are the silliest humbugs of the day.”

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock

“Because,” he added, “Although I ain’t been in the city long, I ain’t to be humbugged; it won’t do for you to try to put off your confounded mock turtles on me!”

From Slate ● Apr. 29, 2018

The sooner America knows we are not going to be humbugged the better it is.

From Time Magazine Archive

P. T. Barnum recorded the fact that the American people delight in being humbugged, and such is still the national mood.

From Time Magazine Archive

I had humbugged myself into thinking I was on my way back to Australia.

From Tiny Luttrell by Ernest William Hornung

"You don't suppose," he said at length, "I am going to stand being humbugged like this."

From A Poached Peerage by William Magnay

Stranded in his "useless position" at Transport, Reith seethed while Churchill put together his "rotten" wartime coalition full of "humbugging and sycophantic" ministers.

From Time Magazine Archive

“One-fifty a month, and we can have a straight lease—no humbugging about clauses.”

From Polly in New York by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

“She was humbugging me, as usual,” he reflected.

From The Revellers by Louis Tracy

It was no use humbugging ourselves into thinking we knew where it was, when no one could possibly know.

From Scamping Tricks and Odd Knowledge Occasionally Practised upon Public Works by John Henry Newman

People think I'm humbugging when I say I can't see them.

From When Ghost Meets Ghost by William Frend De Morgan