(Theatrical) Monter une partie, to get together a small number of actors to give out of Paris one or two performances; (military) —— en ballon, practical joke at the expense of a new-comer. During the night, to both ends of the bed of the victim are fixed two running nooses, the ropes being attached high up on a partition by the side of the bed. At a given signal the ropes being pulled, the occupant of the bed finds himself lifted in the air, with his couch upside down occasionally.
Monteur, m. (theatrical), de partie, an actor whose spécialité is to get together a few brother actors for the purpose of performing out of town; (popular) —— de coups, or de godans, swindler; one who is fond of hoaxing people; one who imposes on others, “humbug.” Concerning the latter term the Slang Dictionary says: “A very expressive but slang word, synonymous at one time with hum and haw. Lexicographers for a long time objected to the adoption of this term. Richardson uses it frequently to express the meaning of other words, but, strange to say, omits it in the alphabetical arrangement as unworthy of recognition! In the first edition of this work, 1785 was given as the earliest date at which the word could be found in a printed book. Since then ‘humbug’ has been traced half a century further back, on the title-page of a singular old jest-book, ‘The Universal Jester, or a pocket companion for the Wits: being a choice collection of merry conceits, facetious drolleries, &c., clenchers, closers, closures, bon-mots, and humbugs, by Ferdinando Killigrew.’ London, about 1735–40. The notorious orator Henley was known to the mob as Orator Humbug. The fact may be learned from an illustration in that exceedingly curious little collection of caricatures published in 1757, many of which were sketched by Lord Bolingbroke, Horace Walpole filling in the names and explanations. Haliwell describes humbug as ‘a person who hums,’ and cites Dean Milles’s MS., which was written about 1760. In the last century the game now known as double-dummy was termed humbug. Lookup, a notorious gambler, was struck down by apoplexy when playing at this game. On the circumstance being reported to Foote, the wit said, ‘Ah, I always thought he would be humbugged out of the world at last!’ It has been stated that the word is a corruption of Hamburg, from which town so many false bulletins and reports came during the war in the last century. ‘Oh, that is Hamburg (or Humbug),’ was the answer to any fresh piece of news which smacked of improbability. Grose mentions it in his Dictionary, 1785; and in a little printed squib, published in 1808, entitled Bath Characters, by T. Goosequill, humbug is thus mentioned in a comical couplet on the title-page:—
Wee Thre Bath Deities bee
Humbug, Follie, and Varietee.
Gradually from this time the word began to assume a place in periodical literature, and in novels written by not over-precise authors. In the preface to a flat, and most likely unprofitable poem, entitled The Reign of Humbug, a Satire, 8vo, 1836, the author thus apologizes for the use of the word: ‘I have used the term humbug to designate this principle (wretched sophistry of life generally), considering that it is now adopted into our language as much as the words dunce, jockey, cheat, swindler, &c., which were formerly only colloquial terms.’ A correspondent, who in a number of Adversaria ingeniously traced bombast to the inflated Doctor Paracelsus Bombast, considers that humbug may, in like manner, be derived from Homberg, the distinguished chemist of the Court of the Duke of Orleans, who, according to the following passage from Bishop Berkeley’s Siris, was an ardent and successful seeker after the philosopher’s stone:—
Of this there cannot be a better proof than the experiment of Monsieur Homberg, who made gold of mercury by introducing light into its pores, but at such trouble and expense that, I suppose, nobody will try the experiment for profit. By this injunction of light and mercury, both bodies became finer, and produced a third different to either, to wit, real gold. For the truth of which fact I refer to the memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences.—Berkeley, Works.”
The Supplementary English Glossary gives the word “humbugs” as the North-country term for certain lumps of toffy, well flavoured with peppermint. (Roughs’) Monter à cheval, to be suffering from a tumour in the groin, a consequence of venereal disease, and termed poulain, foal, hence the jeu de mots; (wine retailers’) —— sur le tonneau, to add water to a cask of wine, “to christen” it. Adding too much water to an alcoholic liquor is termed by lovers of the “tipple” in its pure state, “to drown the miller.”
Monteur de coups, m. (popular), story-teller; cheat.
Monteuse de coups, f. (popular), deceitful woman; one who “bamboozles” her lover or lovers.
Montparno (thieves’), Montparnasse. See [Ménilmonte].