Well just listen to the word. Buzzing is the same as humming, so if you here a fly or other bug fly they hum. Also, some bugs hum when they make their mating calls. i hope this answers your question.

While it is usually used as a synonym for balderdash, poppycock, rubbish, and nonsense its earlier sense carried a connotation of a more purposeful kind of nonsense, an attempt to deceive. This word likely comes from common usage among students in the mid 1700s. The original meaning was a hoax, trick or deceit. It is also possible to "humbug" someone or to "trick" them, so originally the same word was useful as both a noun and a verb. In the famous usage by the Dickens character, Ebenezer Scrooge, he probably mixed the modern connotation with the older meaning - intimating that as far as Ebenezer was concerned, Christmas was at once nonsense AND trickery. This can be seen in his reply to his nephew on the occasion of his nephew trickily tripping him up in his own illogic. This view of Dickens' usage is reinforced by Scrooge calling Christmas "a humbug". It is incorrect usage to say Christmas is "a nonsense".

I think humbugs are also a sweet sold in the UK- hard candies, usually mint flavoured, with green and white stripes on the outside. Never had one though. I know what they are because they were mentioned in the Harry Potter books, and sounded disgusting and fascinating at the same time.

Mint Humbugs are a type of traditional confectionary still sold in Great Britain. A search on Google Images will provide you with suitable illustrations (along with the front cover of a spider-man comic for reasons unknown): http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&lr=&q=mint+humbug&btnG=Search In speech the expression "Humbug!" is to express the opinion of an idea being ill-conceived or worthless. A further British equivalent is to cry out "Rubbish!", as in: "I consider your idea to be a poor one, comparable to that of common refuse".

In the movie "Wizard of Oz," either Dorothy or the Scarecrow, I don't remember, called the charlatan wizard a Humbug after he was discovered behind the curtain. It went something like, "You're nothing but a humbug." "Yes, I am a humbug." I thought it strange at the time and never forgot it.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the origin of the word, "humbug" is unknown.

It came about when people were referring to a large bug that hummed, but otherwise was fairly useless. Thus, 'humbug' was born to mean something insignificant and unimportant. Mel Lacey, Norwich, UK

From somewhere I heard the story that the origin of the word "Humbug" actually did have its root in science. From what I recall of the story, some long time ago some obscure biologist received national attention after returning from the Amazon or such a place with an insect incredible and new to science. This insect had the body of a cicada and was reported to hum loudly. It had the legs of a grasshopper and could jump some distance. It had the mandibles of a stag beetle and the tail of a scorpion. When the insect was inspected by entomologists it was unconvered as as a fake. The glue used to hold the body parts together gave it away. The newspapers all over published retractions - and thus, the term "Humbug" became synonymous with fraud. Such is my recollection. Eddie Dunbar CEO & Founder BugPeople LLC Oakland CA

I lived in Denmark for years, and when the word came up in conversation somebody mentioned to me that humbug is also an old danish word meaning "bullshit." I just did a quick check online and verified this to be the case. A synonym in danish is "svindel," or "fraud". It's odd- I've come across a lot of words like this with "unknown" origins that actually have pretty obvious origins if you're familiar with Danish, Dutch, or (in particular) Irish. Another example: "hold fast!" has all sorts of complicated explanations, but all it really is is a an old dutch sailor's phrase for "stay still."

"The witch, in gypsy as in other lore, is a haunting terror of the night. It has not, that I am aware, ever been conjectured that the word Humbug is derived from the Norse hum, meaning night, or shadows (tenebræ) (JONÆO, "Icelandic Latin glossary in Niall's Saga"), and bog, or bogey, termed in several old editions of the Bible a bug, or "bugges." And as bogey came to mean a mere scarecrow, so the hum-bugges or nightly terrors became synonymes for feigned frights. "A humbug, a false alarm, a bug-bear" ("Dean Milles MS." HALLIWELL). The fact that bug is specialty applied to a nocturnal apparition, renders the reason for the addition of hum very evident. There is a great deal that is curious in this word Bogey. Bug-a-boo is suggestive of the Slavonian Bog and Buh, both meaning God or a spirit. Boo or bo is a hobgoblin in Yorkshire, so called because it is said to be the first word which a ghost or one of his kind utters to a human being, to frighten him. Hence, "he cannot say bo to a goose." Hence boggart, bogle, boggle, bo-guest, i.e., bar-geist, boll, boman, and, probably allied, bock (Devon), fear. Bull-beggar is probably a form of bu and bogey or boge, allied to boll (Northern), an apparition." Source and further information: http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/gsft12.htm