One turn of phrase I vividly remember Dad using was “That’s bunkum!” or “That’s a bunch of bunk.” He used it to express deep skepticism about some assertion I’d made and it implied serious lack of critical thinking on my part. I know he used the term in reference to other folks’ ideas from time to time as well, but used to me it always included the appended but unspoken “you dimwit”.
I believe that I wondered many years back where the phrase had come from. I was more curious because the term isn’t one I heard come out of many other mouths. However, I never looked it up and mostly forgot about the question until this week.
In February, I listened in on an OHS Hatfield lecture via Zoom. Joanne B. Freeman, a scholar whose focus is the US Congress, spoke on the strident conditions in that body in the years preceding the Civil War. The topic seemed particularly timely in the context of current events. Her book, “The Field of Blood”, recaps the turmoil. I bought a copy after the lecture and have been reading since. My attention was caught halfway through the book when her discussion of inflammatory speeches surfaced. “Buncombe speeches” so called because a North Carolina congressman from Buncombe County claimed that “…his heated diatribes were intended only for the folks back home…”. The term caught on enough for the term “bunkum” or “bunk” to become slang. At the same time they were hated by many because according to another congressman, “…they fan the bad feeling of which heaven knows there is enough already.” This sounds very familiar to speechifying in our own congressional sessions which draws ire for similar reasons.
In that the county seat of Buncombe County is only some seventy miles from Pickens SC, it is not much of a surprise to find that the slang term persisted in Dad’s vocabulary.