Gibberish

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Gibberish, also known as jibber-jabber or gobbledygook, is speech that is (or appears to be) nonsense: ranging across speech sounds that are not actual words, [1] pseudowords, language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to outsiders. [2]

Contents

"Gibberish" is also used as an imprecation to denigrate or tar ideas or opinions the user disagrees with or finds irksome, a rough equivalent of "nonsense", "folderol", "balderdash", or "claptrap". The implication is that the criticized expression or proposition lacks substance or congruence, as opposed to being a differing view.

The related word jibber-jabber refers to rapid talk that is difficult to understand. [3]

Etymology

The etymology of gibberish is uncertain. The term was first seen in English in the early 16th century. [4] It is generally thought to be an onomatopoeia imitative of speech, similar to the words jabber (to talk rapidly) and gibber (to speak inarticulately). [5] [6]

It may originate from the word jib , which is the Angloromani variant of the Romani language word meaning "language" or "tongue". To non-speakers, the Anglo-Romany dialect could sound like English mixed with nonsense words, and if those seemingly nonsensical words are referred to as jib then the term gibberish could be derived as a descriptor for nonsensical speech. [7]

Samuel Johnson, in A Dictionary of the English Language , published in 1755, wrote that the word gibberish "is probably derived from the chymical cant, and originally implied the jargon of Geber and his tribe." The theory was that gibberish came from the name of a famous 8th century Muslim alchemist, Jābir ibn Hayyān, whose name was Latinized as Geber. Thus, gibberish was a reference to the incomprehensible technical jargon and allegorical coded language used by Jabir and other alchemists. [8] [9] [10] [11] After 1818, editors of Johnson's Dictionary rejected that origin theory. [12]

A discredited alternative theory asserts that it is derived from the Irish word gob or gab ("mouth") [13] or from the Irish phrase Geab ar ais ("back talk, backward chat"). [14] The latter Irish etymology was suggested by Daniel Cassidy, whose work has been criticised by linguists and scholars. [15] [16] [17] The terms geab and geabaire are certainly Irish words, but the phrase geab ar ais does not exist, and the word gibberish exists as a loan-word in Irish as gibiris. [18]

The term gobbledygook was coined by Maury Maverick, a former congressman from Texas and former mayor of San Antonio. [19] When Maverick was chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II, he sent a memorandum that said: "Be short and use plain English. ... Stay off gobbledygook language." [20] [21] Maverick defined gobbledygook as "talk or writing which is long, pompous, vague, involved, usually with Latinized words." The allusion was to a turkey, "always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity." [22] [23]

Use

Gobbledygook

The term "gobbledygook" has a long history of use in politics to deride deliberately obscure statements and complicated but ineffective explanations. The following are a few examples:

In acting

Using gibberish whilst acting can be used as an improvisation exercise in theatre arts education. [28]

In song

The Italian musical artist Adriano Celentano wrote and performed the song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" in gibberish as an intentional mimic of the sound of English to those who are not fluent in the language.

Other terms and usage

The terms officialese or bureaucratese refer to language used by officials or authorities. Legalese is a closely related concept, referring to language used by lawyers, legislators, and others involved with the law. The language used in these fields may contain complex sentences and specialized jargon or buzzwords, making it difficult for those outside the field to understand. [29] Speakers or writers of officialese or legalese may recognize that it is confusing or even meaningless to outsiders, but view its use as appropriate within their organization or group. [30]

Bafflegab is a synonym, a slang term referring to confusing or a generally unintelligible use of jargon. [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

A false etymology is a false theory about the origin or derivation of a specific word or phrase. When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology. Nevertheless, folk/popular etymology may also refer to the process by which a word or phrase is changed because of a popular false etymology. To disambiguate the usage of the term "folk/popular etymology", Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes a clear-cut distinction between the derivational-only popular etymology (DOPE) and the generative popular etymology (GPE): the DOPE refers to a popular false etymology involving no neologization, and the GPE refers to neologization generated by a popular false etymology.

A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside.

A slang is a vocabulary of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception, with no single technical usage in linguistics.

Jargon or technical language is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a particular occupation, but any ingroup can have jargon. The key characteristic that distinguishes jargon from the rest of a language is its specialized vocabulary, which includes terms and definitions of words that are unique to the context, and terms used in a narrower and more exact sense than when used in colloquial language. This can lead outgroups to misunderstand communication attempts. Jargon is sometimes understood as a form of technical slang and then distinguished from the official terminology used in a particular field of activity.

Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The obfuscation might be either unintentional or intentional, and is accomplished with circumlocution, the use of jargon, and the use of an argot of limited communicative value to outsiders.

Nonsense is a form of communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. In ordinary usage, nonsense is sometimes synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous. Many poets, novelists and songwriters have used nonsense in their works, often creating entire works using it for reasons ranging from pure comic amusement or satire, to illustrating a point about language or reasoning. In the philosophy of language and philosophy of science, nonsense is distinguished from sense or meaningfulness, and attempts have been made to come up with a coherent and consistent method of distinguishing sense from nonsense. It is also an important field of study in cryptography regarding separating a signal from noise.

Bollocks is a word of Middle English origin meaning "testicles". The word is often used in British English and Irish English in a multitude of negative ways; it most commonly appears as a noun meaning "rubbish" or "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to describe something that is of poor quality or useless. It is also used in common phrases like "bollocks to this", which is said when quitting a task or job that is too difficult or negative, and "that's a load of old bollocks", which generally indicates contempt for a certain subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also appears in positive phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" or more simply "the bollocks", which will refer to something which is admired or well-respected.

Pikey is an ethnic slur referring to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. It is used mainly in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to people who belong to groups which had a traditional travelling lifestyle. Groups referred to with this term include Irish Travellers, English Gypsies, Welsh Kale, Scottish Lowland Travellers, Scottish Highland Travellers, and Funfair Travellers. These groups consider the term to be extremely offensive.

A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group. It may also be called a cryptolect, argot, pseudo-language, anti-language or secret language. Each term differs slightly in meaning; their uses are inconsistent. Richard Rorty defines cant by saying that "'Cant', in the sense in which Samuel Johnson exclaims, 'Clear your mind of cant,' means, in other words, something like that which 'people usually say without thinking, the standard thing to say, what one normally says'." In Heideggerian terms it is what "das Man" says.

Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological)reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one through popular usage. The form or the meaning of an archaic, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar word is reinterpreted as resembling more familiar words or morphemes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maury Maverick</span> American politician

Fontaine Maury Maverick Sr. was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas, representing the 20th district from January 3, 1935, to January 3, 1939. He is best remembered for his independence from the party and for coining the term "gobbledygook" for obscure and euphemistic bureaucratic language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mumbo jumbo (phrase)</span> Phrase for confusing or meaningless language

Mumbo jumbo, or mumbo-jumbo, is confusing or meaningless language. The phrase is often used to express humorous criticism of middle-management, and specialty jargon, such as legalese, that non-specialists have difficulty in understanding. For example, "I don't understand all that legal mumbo jumbo in the fine print."

A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word, or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes which nevertheless conform to the language's phonotactic rules. It is thus a kind of vocable: utterable but meaningless.

Gibberish is a language game that is played in the United States and Canada by adding "idig" to the beginning of each syllable of spoken words. Similar games are played in many other countries. The name Gibberish refers to the nonsensical sound of words spoken according to the rules of this game.

Beurla Reagaird is a nearly extinct, Scottish Gaelic-based cant used by the indigenous Traveller community of the Highlands of Scotland, formerly often referred to by the disparaging name "tinkers".

Jibber Jabber may refer to:

The Romani people are known by a variety of names, mostly as Gypsies, Roma, Tsinganoi, Bohémiens, and various linguistic variations of these names. There are also numerous subgroups and clans with their own self-designations, such as the Sinti, Kalderash, Boyash, Manouche, Lovari, Lăutari, Machvaya, Romanichal, Romanisael, Kale, Kaale, Xoraxai and Modyar.

Corporate jargon is the jargon often used in large corporations, bureaucracies, and similar workplaces. The language register of the term is generally being presented in a negative light or disapprovingly. It is often considered to be needlessly obscure or, alternatively, used to disguise an absence of information. Its use in corporations and other large organisations has been widely noted in media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prisencolinensinainciusol</span> 1972 single by Adriano Celentano

"Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a song composed by the Italian singer Adriano Celentano, and performed by Celentano and his wife Claudia Mori. It was released as a single in 1972. Both the name of the song and its lyrics are gibberish but are intended to sound like English in an American accent. The song charted in several European countries.

Officialese, bureaucratese, or governmentese is language that sounds official. It is the "language of officialdom". Officialese is characterized by a preference for wordy, long sentences; complex words, code words, or buzzwords over simple, traditional ones; vagueness over directness; and passive over active voice. The history of officialese can be traced to the history of officialdom, as far back as the eldest human civilizations and their surviving official writings.

References

  1. ↑ Robertson, J.P.S.; Shamsie, S.J. (1959). "A systematic examination of gibberish in a multilingual schizophrenic patient". Language and Speech. 2 (1). Sage: 1–8. doi:10.1177/002383095900200102. S2CID   142914934. Archived from the original on February 2, 2013. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  2. ↑ Laycock, D. (1972). "Towards a typology of ludlings, or play-languages". Linguistic Communications: Working Papers of the Linguistic Society of Australia. 6: 61–113.
  3. ↑ Stevenson, Angus; Lindberg, Christine A. (2010). "jibber-jabber". New Oxford American Dictionary. Oxford University Press USA. ISBN   978-0-19-539288-3.
  4. ↑ Chantrell, Glynnis (2002). The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp.  231. ISBN   0-19-863121-9.
  5. ↑ "gibberish". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2013.
  6. ↑ "Online Etymology Dictionary" . Retrieved 6 February 2014.
  7. ↑ Leland, Charles G. (1873). The English Gipsies and Their Language. New York: Hurd and Houghton. p. 88. If the word gibberish was, as has been asserted, first applied to the language of the Gipsies, it may have been derived either from "Gip," the nickname for Gipsy, with ish or rish appended as in Engl-ish, I-rish, or from the Rommany word jib signifying a language. . . . Writers on such subjects err, almost without an exception, in insisting on one accurately defined and singly derived source for every word, when perhaps three or four have combined to form it. . . . Gibberish may have come from the Gipsy, and at the same time owe something to gabble, jabber, and the old Norse or Icelandic gifra.
  8. ↑ Seaborg, Glenn T. (March 1980). "Our heritage of the elements". Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B. 11 (1). Springer Boston: 5–19. Bibcode:1980MTB....11....5S. doi:10.1007/bf02657166. S2CID   137614510.
  9. ↑ Jack, Albert (2011). It's a Wonderful Word: The Real Origins of Our Favourite Words. London, UK: Random House UK. ISBN   978-1847946690. Archived from the original on 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2015-06-28.
  10. ↑ Quinion, Michael (3 Oct 2015). "Gibberish". World Wide Words. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  11. ↑ Amr, Samir S.; Tbakhi, Abdelghani (2007). "Jabir ibn Hayyan". Annals of Saudi Medicine. 27 (1): 52–53. doi:10.5144/0256-4947.2007.53. PMC   6077026 .
  12. ↑ Kolb, Gwin J.; Demaria, Robert Jr. (1998). "Dr. Johnson's etymology of 'gibberish'". The Free Library. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 15 July 2021. This remark was apparently repeated in all the unabridged versions of Johnson's Dictionary until 1818, when H. J. Todd published his revised edition of the work. Under the entry for gibberish, Todd records 'Dr. Johnson's' comments on the word's etymology and then offers evidence differing from Johnson's surmise and none supporting it.
  13. ↑ Mackay, Charles (1887). A Glossary of Obscure Words and Phrases in the Writings of Shakspeare and his contemporaries Traced Etymologically to the ancient language of the British people as spoken before the irruption of the Danes and Saxons. S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington. pp. 183–184. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
  14. ↑ Cassidy, Daniel (2007). "A Dictionary of Irish-American Vernacular". How the Irish Invented Slang: The secret language of the crossroads. CounterPunch. pp.  155–156. ISBN   978-1-904859-60-4.
  15. ↑ Brady, Michael Patrick (17 October 2007). "How the Irish Invented Slang". PopMatters. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  16. ↑ Barrett, Grant (9 November 2007). "Humdinger of a Bad Irish Scholar". Archived from the original on 2013-09-27. Retrieved 2014-03-24.
  17. ↑ Zwicky, Arnold (9 November 2007). "Gullibility in high places". Language Log. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  18. ↑ Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla. An Gúm. 1992. p. 630. ISBN   978-1-85791-037-7.
  19. ↑ Maverick and Gobbledygook (minicast) (audio). A Way with Words. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
  20. ↑ Maverick, Maury (24 March 1944). "Memorandum from Maury Maverick to Everybody in Smaller War Plants Corporation". The National Archives Catalog. US National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original on 6 May 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2016. Subject: Lengthy memoranda and gobbledygook language. Be short and use plain English.
  21. ↑ "Gobbledygook? Lay off it, Maverick says". Pittsburgh Press . 31 March 1944. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  22. ↑ Maverick, Maury (21 May 1944). "The case against 'Gobbledygook'". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 January 2016. People asked me how I got the word. I do not know. It must have come in a vision. Perhaps I was thinking of the old bearded turkey gobbler back in Texas who was always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity. At the end of his gobble there was a sort of gook.
  23. ↑ Gartner, Michael (26 May 1985). "Gobbledygood". Milwaukee Journal . Retrieved 4 February 2014.[ permanent dead link ]
  24. ↑ Wheen, Francis (2010). Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia . Public Affairs. pp.  11–12. ISBN   978-0-00-744120-4.
  25. ↑ "Simpson's contemporary quotations". Bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 7 December 2008.
  26. ↑ Roeder, Oliver (17 October 2017). "The Supreme Court is allergic to math". FiveThirtyEight .
  27. ↑ "Contemporary Quotes". Chat11.com. October 2007. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  28. ↑ Spolin, Viola (1999). Improvisation for the Theater: A handbook of teaching and directing techniques (3rd ed.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p.  112. ISBN   0810140098.
  29. ↑ Garner, Bryan A. (2009). Garner on Language and Writing. American Bar Association. ISBN   978-1-61632-679-1 . Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  30. ↑ Czarniawska, Barbara (1997). Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0-226-13229-7 . Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  31. ↑ "bafflegab". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
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