humbug

Everyday

1. (UK) A hard, striped peppermint sweet, often black and white. tree →
2. Nonsense or a trick meant to fool people: words that sound important but are false. tree →
3. A person who pretends to be better, kinder or cleverer than they really are. tree →
4. As a cry, «Humbug!» means «Rubbish! I don't believe it!» (old-fashioned). tree →

In the lessons

Most famous from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, where mean old Scrooge says «Bah! Humbug!» about Christmas; so calling someone «a bit of a Scrooge» or saying «bah humbug» today means grumbling about fun. In the UK, humbugs are old-fashioned sweets sold in jars. In stories a humbug is a fraud or a show-off who is found out. Phrases: «bah, humbug», «a mint humbug».

Examples

• Grandad bought a paper bag of mint humbugs at the sweet shop. tree →
• «Bah! Humbug!» growled Scrooge when his nephew wished him a merry Christmas. tree →
• The magic cure the man sold at the fair was pure humbug. tree →
• Don't be such a humbug about the party, Dad! tree →
• The humbug stuck to my teeth for ages. tree →
• He pretended to be a great explorer, but he was a humbug who had never left town. tree →
• My brother says «bah humbug» every time we put up the Christmas tree. tree →
• “Doesn’t anyone else know you’re a humbug?” asked Dorothy. tree →

Note

The sweet is countable (a humbug, humbugs); the nonsense sense is mostly uncountable («that's humbug»). The sweet is mostly British; in the USA the word is known mainly from Scrooge.