Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing.
- n. Highly technical or esoteric language.
- n. Unnecessarily pretentious or vague language.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Rapid and inarticulate talk; unintelligible or incoherent language; confused or disguised speech; jargon.
- n. Synonyms See prattle, n.
- Unmeaning; unintelligible; disguised or jargonized, as words.
Wiktionary
- n. speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless
- n. needlessly obscure or overly technical language
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Rapid and inarticulate talk; unintelligible language; unmeaning words.
- n. Incomprehensible, obscure, or pretentious technical talk or writing; excessively obscure jargon.
- adj. Unmeaning.
WordNet 3.0
- n. unintelligible talking
Etymologies
- Probably from gibber, to speak unintelligibly (of imitative origin) + -ish.
Examples
“Look up the term "gibberish" and tell me I'm wrong.”
“Responding to trollish gibberish is like yelling at an automated phone answering service.”
Think Progress » San Francisco Commonwealth Club postpones O’Keefe event.
“Politicians have to be diplomatic, and pissing off Obama by spouting neocon gibberish is probably not a good idea.”
“The above gibberish is illustrative of what happens when you turn education over to the government.”
“Is there some point that your apparently random gibberish is working toward?”
“We're going to get a pigdin gibberish post one of these days, followed by him announcing he's off to buy a yacht.”
A Dozen Doses of Free Fiction From Robert A. Heinlein and Fritz Leiber
“While getting Anti (?) war. com to stop linking to prowar gibberish is obviously a forlorn task, perhaps you could at least stop paying people to write it?”
“What you need to know in order to understand this gibberish is that the rifle is assumed to be 42.5 inches long, that L equals the distance the bullet will go wide, and that the asterisk means multiply.”
“I couldn't get an email response until I threatened to go to her workplace, and now I can't get the emails to stop - and the best part? turns out there are two women using the same email account and one of them doesn't sign her emails, which explains why one of them is always in gibberish - in 6 weeks of communications I never knew I was speaking to TWO people.”
“Well, "meaningless gibberish" is what they hear, and all they can understand.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gibberish’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Of Imitative Origin
Words formed in imitation of the sound of the things they signify.
bawl, biff, blizzard, blob, blooper, bob, boff, bomb, bonkers, boo, borborygmus, brouhaha and 148 more...
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Talk Talk
Words for Talking
squawk, gab, chatter, chitchat, blab, prattle, blather, discuss, hector, plead, cajole, harangue and 189 more...
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Sounds
words that describe sound
atchoo, atishoo, babble, bam, bay, beep, blast, blather, bleat, bleep, blip, bong and 241 more...
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Verbal Blunders
Speech errors and speech disfluencies
boner, gaffe, malapropism, Freudian slip, blooper, speech disfluency, phonological anti..., phonological pers..., gibberish, repetition, blend, slip of the tongue and 17 more...
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Expressions of disbelief or disagreement
bollocks, come off it, rubbish, as if, bullshit, guff, i don't believe it, are you mad, tosh, nonsense, garbage, bunkum and 51 more...
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Nonsense
Synonyms of "nonsense"
tomfoolery, balderdash, poppycock, lalapalooza, hullabaloo, hodgepodge, gibberish, shenanigans, hootenanny, jabberwocky, gobbledygook, mummery and 15 more...
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Nonsense
I've lost a word. Several months ago, I was reading a tart little essay online (the online counterpart of a British publication, but
*not* my beloved *LRB*, of that I'm pretty sure), and the ...twaddle, codswallop, bafflegab, gimcrackery, balderdash, poppycock, gibberish, tomfoolery, gobbledygook, buffoonery, hogwash, mumbo jumbo and 8 more...
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Perfect Words
Words that perfectly suit the images to which they're bound.
soap, oil, crease, gibberish, scrawl, reluctant, crust, dazzling, dollop, poop
lenligmah "I've been talking drunken gibberish
Falling in and out of bars
Trying to get some explanation here
For the way some people are
How did it ever come so far" - David Gray, singer Dec 29, 2011