humstrum /HUM-STRUM/. noun. A musical instrument of crude or primitive construction. A hurdy-gurdy. Sometimes, music played equally badly. Obviously a portmanteau of hum + strum, favored for the pleasing repetition of sound even describing something displeasing.
“Bonnell Thornton had just published a burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia’s day, adapted to the ancient British musick, viz. the salt-box, the Jew’s-harp, the marrow-bones and cleaver, the humstrum or hurdy-gurdy, &c. Johnson praised its humour, and seemed much diverted with it.” (James Boswell)
“A musical instrument made of a mopstick, a bladder, and some packthread, thence also called a bladder and string, and hurdy gurdy; it is played on like a violin, which is sometimes ludicrously called a humstrum…” (Francis Grose)
“I went the other evening to the concert, and spent the time there much to my heart’s content in cursing Mr. Hague, who played on the violin most piggishly, and a Miss (I forget her name)—Miss Humstrum, who sung most sowishly.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
“They are the Fipple-Flute, a word
Suggestive of seraphic screeches;
The Poliphant comes next, and third
The Humstrum — aren’t they perfect peaches?”
(Punch, or the London Charivari, 1920)