Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

humbug

UK /ˈhʌmbʌɡ/ · US /ˈhəmˌbəɡ/ noun, interjection, verb

Forms humbugs humbugging humbugged

  1. noun (countable, slang) A hoax, jest, or prank.
  2. noun (countable, slang) A fraud or sham; (uncountable) hypocrisy.
  3. noun (countable, slang) A cheat, fraudster, or hypocrite.
  4. noun (uncountable, slang) Nonsense.
  5. noun (countable, UK) A type of hard sweet (candy), usually peppermint flavoured with a striped pattern.
  6. noun (US, countable, slang) Anything complicated, offensive, troublesome, unpleasant or worrying; a misunderstanding, especially if trivial.
  7. noun (US, countable, African-American Vernacular, slang) A fight.
  8. noun (countable, US, African-American Vernacular, slang, dated) A gang.
  9. interjection (slang) Balderdash!, nonsense!, rubbish!
  10. verb (slang, ambitransitive) To play a trick on (someone), to cheat, to swindle, to deceive.
  11. verb (US, African-American Vernacular, slang) To fight; to act tough.
  12. verb (slang, obsolete) To waste time talking.

Synonyms

baloney boloney bilgewater bosh drool taradiddle tarradiddle tommyrot tosh twaddle snake oil fraud fraudulence dupery hoax put-on

Etymology

Origin unknown; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that “the facts as to its origin appear to have been lost, even before the word became common enough to excite attention”. It has been suggested that the word possibly derives from hummer (“(slang) An obvious lie”), or from hum (“(dialectal and slang) to cajole; delude; impose on”) + bug (“a goblin, a spectre”). In his Slang Dictionary (1864), English bibliophile and publisher John Camden Hotten (1832–1873) suggested a link to the name of the German city of Hamburg, “from which town so many false bulletins and reports came during the war in the last century”, or alternatively a derivation from ambage.
Hotten also said he had traced the earliest occurrence of the word to the title page of Ferdinando Killigrew’s book The Universal Jester (see quotations), which he dated to about 1735–1740. This dating has therefore been adopted by other dictionaries. However, the OED dates the word to about 1750, as the earliest edition of Killigrew’s work has been dated to 1754.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun An imposition under fair pretenses; something contrived in order to deceive and mislead; a trick by cajolery; a hoax.
  2. noun A spirit of deception; cajolery; trickishness.
  3. verb To deceive; to impose; to cajole; to hoax.

Etymology [Prob. fr. hum to impose on, deceive + bug a frightful object.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “humbug”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details