Definitions

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

  • adjective Chaotically confused, like Babel.
  • proper noun Chaotically confused language; babble.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Babel +‎ -ish

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Babelish.

Examples

  • Italian, German, and Swiss words, foreign phrases, and Spanish jargon, introduced by foreigners, so that a poor writer has plenty of elbow room in this Babelish language, which has since been taken in hand by

    Droll Stories — Volume 2 Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Italian, German, and Swiss words, foreign phrases, and Spanish jargon, introduced by foreigners, so that a poor writer has plenty of elbow room in this Babelish language, which has since been taken in hand by

    Droll Stories — Complete Collected from the Abbeys of Touraine Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • They may be pushing the non-Creation version of events but when they put it that way, it all sounds a little too Tower of Babelish.

    Jules Crittenden 2008

  • Or, rather, he had invented for himself a language which used the sinews of the languages to which he had been exposed-and once I thought that his was, not the Adamic language that a happy mankind had spoken, all united by a single tongue from the origin of the world to the Tower of Babel, or one of the languages that arose after the dire event of their division, but precisely the Babelish language of the first day after the divine chastisement, the language of primeval confusion.

    The Name of the Rose Eco, Umberto 1980

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.