“I took a share in public debates, with what credit society must judge. We all must submit to public opinion.”
— Felix Walker
“He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk.”
— Minerva McGonagall
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” (2007)
As the first Tuesday in November draws closer, the pace and frequency of political advertisements and speeches will steadily increase. The Republican convention is underway as I write this, and the Democratic convention will soon follow. We’ve already had one debate and at least one other will allow candidates the opportunity to enter our living rooms. The words they speak may just creep their way into the English language with meanings quite different than their original use.
Every time you accuse a fellow sports fan of jumping on the bandwagon, tell your neighbors that they should mend their fences or say that the buck stops with you, you have a politician to thank for your word or turn of phrase. While the meaning of some words is obvious, others take a far more unusual or surprising route into the lexicon. Such is the case with a word introduced inadvertently by one Felix Walker.
Walker was born July 19, 1753, in what is now West Virginia, the son of Irish immigrants. As a young man he found that he had far more talent for the violin than for the plow fields and so left his father’s farm to travel to the vast unsettled wilderness of Kentucky.
It was in Kentucky that he met and joined the party of the legendary Daniel Boone. Though he traveled with Boone for less than a year, he notes in his autobiography his surprise at finding a herd of bison roaming in Kentucky. In 1775, Boone’s party was set upon by natives and Walker was badly injured. Boone himself nursed Walker back to health and a short time later Walker met and married his first wife, Susan Robinson. At the time, he was 25 years old and she was just 15.
After a short time in Tennessee, Walker and his bride settled in North Carolina, but tragedy struck. Susan’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and the event claimed not only the child but also the life of the young expectant mother. Walker went into a deep depression and would be rescued from it by politics and war. After serving in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, he would be named clerk of Rutherford County, North Carolina, and later would be elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives three times. He would remarry, and he and his second wife would be blessed by six children.
In 1816, he was elected to Congress and it was there that he would make his mark on the English language. During his third and final term in 1820, Congress was debating the addition of several states to the Union and whether those states would be permitted to engage in the practice of slavery. The debate would eventually lead to what is historically known as the Missouri Compromise.
Walker wanted to make sure that the hometown voters would know that he had spoken out for their position on the issue. So, on Feb. 25, 1820, he gave a generally pointless and rambling speech on the floor of the House, refusing to yield the floor even when asked to do so by his colleagues. After one such attempt to get him to stop talking, Walker stated that he was, “speaking for Buncombe” in reference to his home district of Buncombe County, North Carolina.
His speech was so devoid of any merit that his fellow congressmen shortened Buncombe to “bunkum” and in common usage we have abbreviated it further to just “bunk”- defined by Webster’s dictionary as “insincere or foolish talk and nonsense.” The word even worked its way into British English to mean fleeing under suspicion.
As for jumping on the bandwagon, the term originated with William Jennings Bryan’s four unsuccessful attempts at the presidency when parade wagons would carry bands and people would literally jump onto the wagon as it passed through town. Fence mending originated with Ohio Sen. John Sherman, who made a political tour in 1879 but insisted that he was not back in his home state to campaign but, “only to repair my fences.” And though passing the buck is a card playing phrase, it was President Harry S. Truman who said, “The buck stops here.”
Listen closely to those campaign speeches — you might just pick up a new word or two.
David Hejmanowski is judge of the Probate/Juvenile Division of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, where he has served as magistrate, court administrator, and now judge, since 2003. He has written a weekly column on law and history for The Gazette since 2005.
