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
- adj. unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless
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
- ca. 16th century. Either an onomatopeia, imitating to the sound of chatter, probably influenced by jabber, or derived from the root of the Irish gob ("the mouth"). (Wiktionary)
- Probably from gibber, to speak unintelligibly (of imitative origin) + -ish. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
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 4087 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
( open list, randomness )squawk, gab, chatter, chitchat, blab, prattle, blather, discuss, hector, plead, cajole, harangue and 200 more...
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Sounds
words that describe sound
atchoo, atishoo, babble, bam, bay, beep, blast, blather, bleat, bleep, blip, bong and 242 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 58 more...
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INTERP - 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 18 more...
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Nonsense
Synonyms of "nonsense"
tomfoolery, balderdash, poppycock, lalapalooza, hullabaloo, hodgepodge, gibberish, shenanigans, hootenanny, jabberwocky, gobbledygook, mummery and 21 more...
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wl1
occult, necromancy, diabolism, conjure, metaphoric, metaphor, sorcerer, legerdemain, talisman, amulet, necrophobia, deftness and 135 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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Things from my memory
nigger baby, mexican jumping bean, puddle jumper, mood ring, pet rock, cat scratch fever, taxman, hippie, vaseline, argyrol, mercurchrome, methiolade and 655 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
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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simple & useful9
heartrendingly, rancorous, ferocity, earful, dispiriting, dandification, ascribing, monotonic, smattering, yesteryear, sword of damocles, blubbering and 104 more...
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nominative case collection
wine stopper, pyre, roster, hamper, moleskin, elastic, pinnacle, facsimile, nook, plonk, contortionist, dismay and 342 more...
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katiad's Words
exquisite, obnoxious, noxious, extravaganza, whirlwind, whirling, wild, spinster, existential, chaos, zephyr, blasphemy and 310 more...
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harrisj's Words
skeumorph, liminal, enervated, essential, moiety, motley, haphazard, bone-picker, resolute, petard, jigsaw, schism and 117 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gibberish.
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