hokum

noun

1. (countable, informal, uncountable, usually)(An instance of) meaningless nonsense with an outward appearance of being impressive and legitimate.

   “Recently that publication [Collier's Weekly] has been filling its readers with the good old hokum about red likker and its steady disappearance, and if what has been offered be but half true, beer, light wine and all of the other beverages which have been tabooed by law, are on their way to that place where nothing returns.”

   “Being in a mood of constructive criticism, I suggest that all future student conferences be made strictly social affairs. All addresses, forum discussions, patriotic service, and other hocums, as such, shall be done away with. Outside of a handful of persons, who either had to or did not know any better, everybody shunned the non-social events.”

   “I think we have learned to beware of these political charlatans. We have enough horse sense to neutralize their hokum. But let's start right now to take their hokum apart and show up its component elements for just what they are—the siren songs of demagogy.”

   “It is pure hocum, this language that they want more police officers, and they vetoed it over the lack of funding in this account. It is just a pure political thing.”

2. (countable, informal, uncountable, usually)(An instance of) excessively contrived, hackneyed, or sentimental material in a film, television programme, theater production, etc.

   “The majority of the twenty-six stunts described in this volume belong to a species of so-called hokum acts derived from the professional stage and handed down through several generations of actors.”

   “The "classy" stuff is pretty to talk about, it furnishes inspiration for the dramatic writer, but it is the hocum, the jazbo, what vaudeville styles "comedy acts," which please an audience.”

   “[M]ostly the moviegoer has to put up with clumsily contrived fist fights, musical brogues spoken as though the actor were coping with an excess of tobacco juice in his mouth, mugging that plays up all the trusted hokums that are supposed to make the Irish so humorous-sympathetic, and a script that tends to resolve its problems by having the cast embrace, fraternity-brother fashion, and break out into full-throated ballads.”

3. (countable, informal, usually)A film, television programme, theater production, etc., containing excessively contrived, hackneyed, or sentimental material.

   “[H]e [Stanley Baker] was still churning out the kind of Boy's Own hokums and dreary international espionage thrillers that defined that bygone era.”

4. (uncountable, usually)A genre of blues song or music, often characterized by sexual innuendos or satire.

   “[D]uring the 'twenties, jazz developed from an infrequent ‘hokum’ music in a few vaudeville acts to a household commodity.”

   “As a result a hybrid music, ‘hokum’, became popular. It owed much to ‘Georgia Tom’ Dorsey, Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy, and the first recordings in the idiom appeared around 1929. Many recordings by The Famous Hokum Boys, the Hokum Trio, The Hokum Boys and similar groups were recorded by 1930. Jokey, often bawdy, frequently satirical, they employed rural techniques in an urban setting, gently lampooning country ways through a city sophistication.”

   “ES: That thing that you call double bow, I've heard many different names for it. / JG: Rockin' the bow. / ES: I've heard it called a straight shuffle. I've heard it called hocum. Have you ever heard it called hocum? / JG: Yeah, we call the jazz hocum. You see, anything away from the melody.”

   “Pianist [Thomas A.] Dorsey and guitarist Tampa Red popularized the double-entendre, up-tempo novelty blues style known as hokum blues that was a forerunner of the up-tempo rhythm and blues, whose similarly adult lyrics often had to be bowdlerized when covered by white singers for the white teen market in the 1950s.”

   “Blues and hokum intertwined at least through the mid-1930s, when the hokum bands faded out. [...] Hokum was also absorbed into the jazz tradition.”