gibberish
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
n.words that make no sense, like when someone is talking in their sleep or a computer makes a mistake.
n.speech or writing that is incoherent, meaningless, or unintelligible. Uncountable in this sense.
Simple“The fever made him talk gibberish all through the night.”
In context“The corrupted file displayed nothing but gibberish on the screen, making it impossible for the technicians to recover the original text.”
- 02 C1 Advanced
n.language that is so technical or complicated that you cannot understand it.
n.needlessly obscure or overly technical language that fails to communicate meaning to the listener.
Simple“The legal contract was full of technical gibberish that I couldn't follow.”
In context“The manual was written in such dense technical gibberish that even the experienced engineers struggled to perform the basic setup.”
Synonymsjargondouble talkAntonymsplain english - 03 C2 Proficiency
adj.describing something that is impossible to understand or makes no sense.
adj.unintelligible, incoherent, or lacking in meaning. Used attributively to describe speech or text.
Simple“He left a gibberish voicemail that sounded like he was in a noisy crowd.”
In context“The witness provided a gibberish account of the events, which the detectives immediately dismissed as a fabrication.”
Synonyms
First attested mid-16th century. Origin obscure. Possibly from *gibber, of onomatopoeic origin imitating to the sound of chatter, possibly from or influenced by jabber, + -ish denoting the name of a language (compare English, Finnish, Spanish, etc.). The verb gibber, first attested circa 1600, is usually regarded as a back-formation from gibberish.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.