What's the difference between balderdash and humbug?

Balderdash


Definition:

  • (n.) A worthless mixture, especially of liquors.
  • (n.) Senseless jargon; ribaldry; nonsense; trash.
  • (v. t.) To mix or adulterate, as liquors.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And lest there be any remaining doubt, a forensic expert on maggots – such people do exist – testified that the theory of "semen-destroying maggots" was balderdash.
  • (2) Other balderdash included Nick Clegg's phoney claim : "As a proportion of this country's wealth, this government will be spending more in public spending at the end of this parliament after all these cuts, than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were when they came into power."
  • (3) The balderdash quotient is high at all party conferences, but at a time like this people will wince more than ever at high-minded phrases from government ministers that disguise a very different reality.
  • (4) That kind of balderdash brings politics into disrepute.

Humbug


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To deceive; to impose; to cajole; to hoax.
  • (n.) An imposition under fair pretenses; something contrived in order to deceive and mislead; a trick by cajolery; a hoax.
  • (n.) A spirit of deception; cajolery; trickishness.
  • (n.) One who deceives or misleads; a deceitful or trickish fellow; an impostor.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Vice, folly and humbug – it is the point of satire really.
  • (2) What more timely image could there be for his departure than a Christmas costume and a prescience for all the humbug that will inevitably attend his death.
  • (3) Shortly after, they began to produce confectioneries such as chocolate limes, humbugs and caramels.
  • (4) Gary McNair: War on Christmas Anyone who has ever felt like saying “Bah, humbug!” to the John Lewis ad will find a kindred spirit in Gary McNair, playing a Santa working in a down-at-heel Christmas grotto who decides to investigate what Christmas means if you are poor.
  • (5) But, you may exclaim, what humbug for countries that invaded Iraq to excoriate others for violating sovereignty.
  • (6) Counties lose their names, trains lose their livery, ginger snaps lose their flavour and mint humbugs their sharp corners ... under my derationalisation programme, Yorkshire would get back its Ridings, the red telephone box would be a preserved species, there would be Pullman cars called Edna, a teashop in every high street and a proper card index in the public library."
  • (7) Accusing his opponents of "the most blatant hypocrisy in pretending they have changed to a modern, enlightened party", Lord Lester said: "What they have done is seek to destroy the central purpose of the bill under the guise of giving rights to others and it's complete humbug done for electoral purposes."
  • (8) It has not reached the pitch of disintegration at which humbug can be dropped."
  • (9) Lymphocystis disease is reported for the first time from the white-tailed damselfish, Dascyllus aruanus, and the black-tailed humbug, Dascyllus melanurus.
  • (10) I thought of the tourist scrums pushing each other off the pavements, jostling for souvenir humbugs and wind-up Beefeaters.
  • (11) Typical young man's title, you see, typical piece of that sort of humbugging, canting rhetoric, which young men - bless their hearts - specialise in.
  • (12) We probably all know a few pre-Games humbug-criers – shouting themselves hoarse in stadiums or rapt and sometimes in tears in front of the TV – who have looked like Scrooge on Christmas morning in the last few weeks.
  • (13) So the return of WTPS may serve to revive the genre, the old ghost donning its armour to do battle once more with humbug and pomposity.
  • (14) It was a strange experience to hear this paragon of logic, sceptical of all humbug trotting out stories that normally he would have scoffed at.
  • (15) It's enough to put you off shopping altogether, and has done for Nicole Slavin who is "bah humbug about Christmas , partly because of the commercialisation and the sheer social pressure to buy people things".
  • (16) For Labour, with the taste of Suez still in their mouths, Hugh Gaitskell described this as "the worst humbug and hypocrisy."
  • (17) Their latest, Humbug , recorded in the Californian desert with Josh Homme, reveals a more mature, assured band.