hokumnoun/ˈhəʊkəm/

• 1

  informal(An instance of) meaningless nonsense with an outward appearance of being impressive and legitimate.

  • Recently that publication [Collier's Weekly] has been filling its readers with the good old hokum about red likker and its steady disappearance, and if what has been offered be but half true, beer, light wine and all of the other beverages which have been tabooed by law, are on their way to that place where nothing returns.
  • Being in a mood of constructive criticism, I suggest that all future student conferences be made strictly social affairs. All addresses, forum discussions, patriotic service, and other hocums, as such, shall be done away with. Outside of a handful of persons, who either had to or did not know any better, everybody shunned the non-social events.
• 2

  informal(An instance of) excessively contrived, hackneyed, or sentimental material in a film, television programme, theater production, etc.

  • The majority of the twenty-six stunts described in this volume belong to a species of so-called hokum acts derived from the professional stage and handed down through several generations of actors.
  • Every experienced playwright, every manager, every stage director, every intelligent actor who has passed his novitiate, knows of things that always have received a certain definite response. Many of these have been formulated. In the sad, glad days of prosperous melodrama they were known as "sure-fire hokum." [...] The "sure-fire hokum" of murderous melodrama encompassed, in a crudely elemental form it is true, nearly all the essentials of success in dramatic situation, most of the values that make popular favor for a play.
• 3

  informalA film, television programme, theater production, etc., containing excessively contrived, hackneyed, or sentimental material.

  • [H]e [Stanley Baker] was still churning out the kind of Boy's Own hokums and dreary international espionage thrillers that defined that bygone era.
• 4

  entertainmentlifestylemusicA genre of blues song or music, often characterized by sexual innuendos or satire.

  • [D]uring the 'twenties, jazz developed from an infrequent ‘hokum’ music in a few vaudeville acts to a household commodity.
  • As a result a hybrid music, ‘hokum’, became popular. It owed much to ‘Georgia Tom’ Dorsey, Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy, and the first recordings in the idiom appeared around 1929. Many recordings by The Famous Hokum Boys, the Hokum Trio, The Hokum Boys and similar groups were recorded by 1930. Jokey, often bawdy, frequently satirical, they employed rural techniques in an urban setting, gently lampooning country ways through a city sophistication.