the.com/gobbledygook

Language designed to sound smart while saying nothing at all.

means Wordy, convoluted language — often bureaucratic or technical — so dense with jargon that it obscures rather than reveals meaning.

from Coined in the 1940s by a Texas congressman, Maury Maverick, who was fed up with turgid bureaucratic memos. He said the word was meant to evoke a turkey's gobble — 'always gobbledy gobbling' — with a ridiculous, strutting pomposity at the end. He even banned the word's opposite — stiff bureaucratic language itself — in memos he oversaw, which is a nice irony: a politician coining a word to fight the very fog politicians are famous for producing.

coined by
Texas congressman Maury Maverick, 1944
inspired by
turkeys gobbling pompously, he said
favorite habitat
legal contracts and corporate memos
irony level
a fancy word mocking fancy words
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