Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Nonsense; gibberish.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Confused talk; gibberish; nonsense of any kind.
  • noun Any confused or nonsensical mixture of incongruous things.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Nonsense; gibberish; confused and unmeaning talk; confused mixture.

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

  • noun nonsense, gobbledygook

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French

Support

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

Examples

Comments

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

  • Gibberish; confused, meaningless jargon. (Luciferous Logolepsy)

    May 16, 2008

  • First appearance in English is in 1653, in Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of the works of the French author François Rabelais: “A Galimatia of Extravagant Conceits.�?

    Note that this word, despite the later added "s", is singular, not plural.

    June 26, 2009

  • "It's all amphigories and dillydallying," she told herself, "rigamarole and bibble-babble, balderdash and fiddle-faddle, gibberish and galamatias."

    Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 76 of the NYRB paperback

    November 6, 2010