Derivation?

Sounds Yiddish to me.

(from Encarta) bun·kum [ búngkəm ] noun Definitions: nonsense: talk or writing dismissed as nonsensical or inaccurate ( informal ) [Mid-19th century. Alteration of Buncombe County, N Carolina, whose congressman defended a dull and irrelevant speech by saying he made it to impress the people of Bunc...

Tolkein used the word on one of his maps. I never realized it was in play in English -- thought it was from one of his mythical vocabularies.

Thanks for the links. Actually it was indeed the roots I was asking about -- of course we do not know any PIE or even IE words with precision. Rather careless of me. Sorry 'bout that.

I am always fascinated when an etymology traces a word or syllable back to ProtoIndoEuropean. While there are some resources on the Web (according unto the Great Google), I have never been able to find anything approaching a PIE glossary or dictionary -- something approaching a complete vocabulary a...