Humbugging
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An act of one who humbugs (in all senses, for example, swindling, fighting, etc.). countable, uncountable
"Extract from a letter to Horace Walpole, written from Florence, in Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, ed. W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith, and George L. Lam (1960), p. 446. […] You will laugh at me, I suppose, when I say I don't understand Tristram Shandy, because it was probably the intention of the author that nobody should. It seems to me humbugging, if I have a right notion of an art of talking or writing that has been invented since I left England."
- 1 present participle and gerund of humbug. form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"Extract from a letter to Horace Walpole, written from Florence, in Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, ed. W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith, and George L. Lam (1960), p. 446. […] You will laugh at me, I suppose, when I say I don't understand Tristram Shandy, because it was probably the intention of the author that nobody should. It seems to me humbugging, if I have a right notion of an art of talking or writing that has been invented since I left England."
Etymology
From humbug + -ing.
More for "humbugging"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.