{"id":551,"date":"2012-03-23T08:59:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T15:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com\/?p=551"},"modified":"2012-03-23T08:59:30","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T15:59:30","slug":"bunk-or-buncombe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/2012\/03\/23\/bunk-or-buncombe\/","title":{"rendered":"Bunk or Buncombe?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>(Submitted<\/strong> by friend of the blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/theoddsmustbecrazy.com\/tag\/brian-hart\">Brian Hart<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>I<\/strong> was visiting\u00a0Atlanta\u00a0to do a panel discussion on education vs. debunking.\u00a0\u00a0Prior to the panel, I started thinking about the word bunk and debunk and decided to find their original meanings.\u00a0\u00a0A few minutes of Internet research told me that the word was derived from a region in\u00a0North Carolina\u00a0called\u00a0Buncombe\u00a0County.\u00a0\u00a0A representative from that county in the 1820s named Felix Walker was known to ramble on with long and wearisome speeches for Buncombe.\u00a0\u00a0In\u00a0Washington,\u00a0D.C. \u00a0the term, &#8220;you are full of Buncombe&#8221; became a common phrase.\u00a0\u00a0Over the years the spelling changed to bunkum and the meaning morphed into &#8220;any kind of nonsense.&#8221; \u00a0I was able to bring this origin and meaning into the panel discussion that day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Two\u00a0<\/strong>days later, my wife and I drove to see her cousins in\u00a0Asheville,\u00a0North Carolina.\u00a0\u00a0We arrived in the evening, and when I was talking about my panel and recounting the origin of Bunkum to the cousins, they all laughed and said, &#8220;Asheville\u00a0is the seat of Buncombe\u00a0County!&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0The next day we walked over and took pictures of the courthouse, where the words\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;Buncombe County Court House&#8221; are written in stone.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_552\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Brian-and-Bumcombe.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-552\" class=\"size-large wp-image-552\" title=\"Brian and Bumcombe\" src=\"http:\/\/www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Brian-and-Bumcombe-1024x612.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"382\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-552\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brian Hart in front of the Bumcombe County Courthouse<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was visiting Atlanta to do a panel discussion on education vs. debunking.  Prior to the panel, I started thinking about the word bunk and debunk and decided to find their original meanings.  A few minutes of Internet research told me that the word was derived from a region in North Carolina called Buncombe County.  A representative from that county in the 1820s named Felix Walker was known to ramble on with long and wearisome speeches for Buncombe.  In Washington, D.C.  the term, &#8220;you are full of Buncombe&#8221; became a common phrase.  Over the years the spelling changed to bunkum and the meaning morphed into &#8220;any kind of nonsense.&#8221;  I was able to bring this origin and meaning into the panel discussion that day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1535,1536,604,1537,1538,1539,1540,1541,1542,1543,1544,1545,206,1546],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","tag-asheville","tag-atlnata","tag-brian-hart","tag-buncombe","tag-buncombe-county","tag-bunk","tag-bunkum","tag-debunk","tag-debunking","tag-education","tag-nc","tag-nonsense","tag-north-carolina","tag-word-origins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}