humbug vs sham

humbug

noun
  • A hoax, jest, or prank. 

  • Nonsense. 

  • A type of hard sweet (candy), usually peppermint flavoured with a striped pattern. 

  • A fight. 

  • A fraud or sham; (uncountable) hypocrisy. 

  • A false arrest on trumped-up charges. 

  • The piglet of the wild boar. 

  • A cheat, fraudster, or hypocrite. 

  • Anything complicated, offensive, troublesome, unpleasant or worrying; a misunderstanding, especially if trivial. 

intj
  • Balderdash!, nonsense!, rubbish! 

verb
  • To fight; to act tough. 

  • To play a trick on someone, to cheat, to swindle, to deceive. 

sham

noun
  • Trickery, hoaxing. 

  • A decorative cover for a pillow. 

  • A false front, or removable ornamental covering. 

  • A fake; an imitation that purports to be genuine. 

  • Champagne. 

adj
  • mock 

  • Intended to deceive; false. 

  • counterfeit; unreal 

  • See also Thesaurus:fake 

verb
  • To obtrude by fraud or imposition. 

  • To deceive, cheat, lie. 

  • To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign. 

How often have the words humbug and sham occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )