Definition: noun insincere or foolish talk : nonsense

Etymology: Buncombe county, North Carolina; from a remark made by its congressman, who defended an irrelevant speech by claiming that he was speaking to Buncombe
Date: 1845

Quotation: “Their whole future was at stake, and the future of their wives and children; if they could win the three-shift day, they would have leisure to study and think, and raise their own status, and keep their children longer in school. That was the real issue in this strike, and if democracy did not mean that, it had no meaning, and talk about patriotism was buncombe.”
- from “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair

Finally, a strike against another county not Gaston! I saw this word while reading “Oil!” and figured it had to be related to the more common (barely) phrasing “bunk”. A more in depth explanation can be found in the Wikipedia article for “bunkum“.