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The Idiot vocabulary
140 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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humbug
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synonyms: blague, bosh, gammon ???
► definition
Definition:1. An imposition under fair pretenses; something contrived in order to deceive and mislead; a trick by cajolery; a hoax.2. A spirit of deception; cajolery; trickishness.3. One who deceives or misleads; a deceitful or trickish fellow; an impostor.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
It's all hateful. They're singing for vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if he were afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this singing and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other like these cab drivers who are abusing each other so angrily.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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"Well, then, let him talk, mamma," said Alexandra. "This prince is a great humbug and by no means an idiot," she whispered to Aglaya.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Idiot (1887)
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Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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