Word.ws English Dictionary

buncombe

buncombe is the alternative spelling of bunkum.

Meaning of bunkum

Noun

bunkum (countable and uncountable, plural bunkums)

  1. (countable, dated, slang) Senseless talk; nonsense; a piece of nonsense.
    • […] the manifold and serpentine wiles and evasions, shufflings and fencings, deceits and dissimulations, he had practised —the bunkums and the quackeries, […]1925, Eden Phillpotts, Circé's Island: And The Girl & the Faun, page 122
  2. (dated) Bombastic political posturing or oratorical display designed only for show or public applause.
    Synonyms:
    grandstanding

Proper noun capitalized: Buncombe

Buncombe

  1. A surname.
  2. A village in Johnson County, Illinois, United States.

Words formed from buncombe

Questions about buncombe

What does buncombe mean?
Buncombe means a surname.
What is buncombe the alternative spelling of?
Buncombe is the alternative spelling of bunkum.
What part of speech is buncombe?
Buncombe is a proper noun.

Words near buncombe in the dictionary

  1. bunco-steerer
  2. bunco-steerers
  3. buncoed
  4. buncoes
  5. buncoing
  6. buncombe
  7. Buncombe County
  8. buncos
  9. Buncrana
  10. bund
  11. bunda

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buncombe (page history and authors); Buncombe (page history and authors); bunkum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “buncombe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buncombe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.