Definitions

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

  • noun Unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing.
  • noun Highly technical or esoteric language.
  • noun Unnecessarily pretentious or vague language.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Rapid and inarticulate talk; unintelligible or incoherent language; confused or disguised speech; jargon.
  • noun Synonyms See prattle, n.
  • Unmeaning; unintelligible; disguised or jargonized, as words.

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

  • noun Rapid and inarticulate talk; unintelligible language; unmeaning words.
  • noun Incomprehensible, obscure, or pretentious technical talk or writing; excessively obscure jargon.
  • adjective Unmeaning.

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

  • noun speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless
  • noun needlessly obscure or overly technical language
  • adjective unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun unintelligible talking

Etymologies

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

[Probably from gibber + –ish.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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").

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Examples

Comments

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  • "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

    December 29, 2011