humbug

[George Thompson]

Newspapermen are a constant source of false word histories.  Really, they seem quite incorrigible.  Here is another one:

HUMBUG! -- I see by the "Berks and Schuykill Journal," that the word HUMBUG, which we credit to the English, . . . is traceable to American parentage. . . .  The writer gives the history of Homberg, the medical imposter, who figured in Philadelphia, in 1807, and from whose name came at first the verb homberged, meaning taken in.  Perhaps, it is rather a coincident resemblance than a derivation; but it will answer until a better is found.
        Evening Post [New York], October 21, 1843, p. 2, col. 5, quoting the "New York Corres. of Nat. Inq."

There was a "National Enquirer and Democratic Signal" buing published in Harrisburg, Pa., in 1843, but a few months earlier the editor of the Evening Post (William Cullen Bryant, the poet, by the way) had referred to "the gossiping and sprightly New York correspondent of the National Intelligencer" who is no doubt the source being cited here.  The Intelligencer was published in Washington, D. C.  It is available here in microfilm, but it seems that to get further details on the infamous Homberg I would have to consult the Berks Journal.  Otherwise, the full-text Pennsylvania Gazette only goes up to 1800, Niles' Register starts in 1811, and the index to Scharf's late 19th century 4-volume History of Philadelphia doesn't mention him.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.