epigone

Pronounced: EH-puh-goan, noun

Notes: This looked Greek to me, but I couldn’t figure out the meaning

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Yesterday’s word

The word hokum means

• nonsense
• Trite material introduced to evoke an emotional response from an audience

First usage

This word is just over 100 years old, coming into English in the 1910s

Background / Comments

I thought that this word meant “nonsense” (the first definition above), but was unaware of the second meaning. I thought that the word “hoke” was the second meaning, but apparently, they are interchangeable. I ran across “hoke” (but maybe “hokum”) near the end of the film Holiday Inn. Our word was created by combining hocus-pocus with bunkum.