The carpenter came. Like most artisans, he was clever in a groove: take him out of that, and lo! a mule, a pig, an owl. He was not only unable to invent, but so stiffly disinclined: a makeshift rudder was clean out of his way; and, as his whole struggle was to get away from every suggestion Dodd made back to groove aforesaid, the thing looked hopeless. Then Fullalove, who had stood by grinning, offered to make a bunkum rudder, provided the carpenter and mates were put under his orders.
I wonder if there isn't a lot of bunkum in higher education? I never found that people who were learned in logarithms and other kinds of poetry were any quicker in washing dishes or darning socks.
1923, Christopher Morley, The Powder of Sympathy, page 265
The old bunkums, one suspects, still pass current here as they do not any longer in England.
1925, Eden Phillpotts, Circé's Island: And The Girl & the Faun, page 122
[...] the manifold and serpentine wiles and evasions, shufflings and fencings, deceits and dissimulations, he had practised —the bunkums and the quackeries, [...].
1941, Sampige Venkatapathaiya, Meher Baba: The Greatest Hoax of the XX Century, page 98
The greatest of all the bunkums that we have so far seen is the most blasphemous claim put forth by this ex-toddy seller [...].
a.1950, James Stephens Letters of James Stephens, (Macmillan, 1974), page 49
There are two sides to the moon, and the bards if they wish it might state a hard case against the land of saints and scolars, the land of tin-trumpery of this and the other description, the land of incredible bunkums and blindnesses. Boston never claimed culture so vociferously [...].
1955, Neil Bell, My Writing Life, page 137
These medical bunkums have their vogue and then make way for others.
1978, M. M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions, page 854
'Well of all the -!' began the doctor explosively; and then broke into laughter. 'Bunkum, my dear boy - bunkum! Faith, I never heard such twaddle in me life, [...]
