Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A meaningless rigmarole, as of nonsense-verses or the like; a nonsensical parody.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A nonsense verse; a rigmarole, with apparent meaning, which on further attention proves to be meaningless.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A nonsense verse; a rigmarole, with apparent meaning, which on further attention proves to be meaningless.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun nonsensical writing (usually verse)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French amphigouri, of uncertain derivation; perhaps from Ancient Greek a circle.

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Examples

  • He is the one that refuses to clarify and test his ideas with experts in the fields he claims to be revolutionizing and instead hides behind amphigory and ambiguity.

    Michael Shermer: Deepakese: The Woo-Woo Master Deepak Chopra Speaks 2009

  • Rather more difficult was turning down about seventy bucks worth of other discoveries -- a Nigel Pennick amphigory of subterranean constructions, a book on occult and ritual elements in British folk songs, and something fascinatingly called The Covert Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Counter-Culture and its Aftermath, which wasn't about the actual C.XVIII counter-culture the Great Awakening but about Swedenborg and Mesmer, but still.

    Kenneth Hite's Journal princeofcairo 2007

  • It was like a blood-sucking mosquito but quaffing away analytic and synthetic processes of idea making, aggravating placid delusions in fever, and muddling the mind in an amphigory of simplistic human nature, which when unchecked, was really more carnal, multi-dimensioned, and beastly than anyone would care to presume.

    An Apostate: Nawin of Thais

  • There is always a danger that a poet, in his search after the infinitely ingenious, may lapse into _amphigory_, into sheer absurdity and triviality, which Cowper, in spite of his elegant lightness, does not always escape.

    Some Diversions of a Man of Letters Edmund Gosse 1888

  • It how to transfer vhs dvd me lacebark so tensional to be perfumed and to be sedulous by the demotic and quitter that i blowfly, and puts my own worship or pericarditis in amphigory.

    POWET.TV 2009

  • Robert J. Powers Shreveport, Louisiana I found Mr. Henry Henn's amphigory [XIV, 3] on military slang interesting, but his explanation of the meaning of Viet is at variance with my information.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XV No 2 1984

  • \tab They had to explain to me both terms; then they sang me a little song that seemed partly amphigory and partly ancient English, but included both terms.

    Time Enough For Love Heinlein, Robert A. 1973

  • “Right, think of the commercial, that’s the mnemonic to remember the key parts of the inguinal,” said the instructor, initiating an amphigory recitation . . . “areolar tissue . . . aponeurosis . . .”

    Body of Knowledge Steve Giegerich 2001

Comments

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  • Do not confuse with Amphigorey, possibly the most cleverly named tome in existence.

    May 16, 2009

  • so agreed!

    August 5, 2010

  • JM makes a nonsense of amphigory.

    October 26, 2010

  • I love that there is a word for this.

    May 10, 2011

  • amphigory

    A meaningless rigmarole, as of nonsense-verses or the like; a nonsensical parody.

    July 9, 2022