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Bunburying is a term introduced by Oscar Wilde in the play The Importance of Being Earnest. It is the art of inventing a friend whose troubles are so compelling that nobody will question the need to visit that friend at short notice, and for any length of time.

In the play, the character Algernon describes to his friend John (or Jack) how his imaginary friend Bunbury lives in the country and frequently "falls ill", giving Algernon the excuse he needs to leave town (that is, London), escaping relatives and social commitments. John in turn has a fictional brother, Ernest, who lives in London but is frequently in trouble, giving John the opportunity to visit London from the country whenever he pleases. When in London, he assumes the identity of Ernest.

The term may have been a reference to the bet that took place between Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby and Sir Charles Bunbury following the first running of the Epsom Oaks in 1779. The pair flipped a coin to decide who would have the race named after him. Smith-Stanley won and thus the race was named the "Epsom Derby" rather than "The Epsom Bunbury". Wilde therefore may have been making a reference to the hypothetical and fictitious nature of the "Epsom Bunbury" and Bunburying in general.

However, according to a letter from Aleister Crowley to Bruce Lockhart, the word is an in-joke conjunction that came about after Wilde boarded a train at Banbury on which he met a schoolboy. They got into conversation and subsequently arranged to meet again at Sunbury. Hence its use in terms of living a double life. (See D'arch Smith, Timothy: Bunbury - Two Notes on Oscar Wilde (1998)).

While the word may have been such a mild in-joke, Sir Donald Sinden, who had met two of the play's original participants in the 1940s—Irene Vanbrugh, the first Gwendolen, and Allan Aynesworth, the first Algy—as well as Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote to The Times in 2001 to dispute that it held any sexual connotation: "Although they had ample opportunity, at no time did any of them even hint that Earnest was a synonym for homosexual, or that Bunburying may have implied homosexual sex. The first time I heard it mentioned was in the 1980s and I immediately consulted Sir John Gielgud whose own performance of John Worthing in the same play was legendary and whose knowledge of theatrical lore was encyclopaedic. He replied in his ringing tones: "No-No! Nonsense, absolute nonsense: I would have known." (The Times, 2 February 2001).

Bunburying has also been seen as a metaphor for Wilde's own double life, as a married socialite in Victorian England who was secretly an active homosexual. In this sense anyone leading a double life might be said to be Bunburying.

• Usage in relation to bird behavior