bafflegab

English edit

Etymology edit

baffle +‎ gab, coined 1952.^[1]

Pronunciation edit

IPA^(key): /ˈbæfəɫɡæb/

Noun edit

bafflegab (uncountable)

Pretentious, incomprehensible, or overly technical language, especially legal or bureaucratic jargon.
- 2015 September 29, Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, Crown, →ISBN:
  Toss in a few technical terms that most people don't understand—"stochastic" this, "regression" that—and you can use people's justified respect for math and science to get them nodding along. This is granularity as bafflegab.
- 2020 July 29, Cory Doctorow, “Break 'Em Up”, in Pluralistic‎^[1], retrieved 2020-08-02:
  Teachout has a gift for slicing through the bafflegab and revealing that the grifter's patter disguises nothing more than unimaginative, sociopathic scams.

Synonyms edit

gobbledygook; see also Thesaurus:nonsense

Verb edit

bafflegab (third-person singular simple present bafflegabs, present participle bafflegabbing, simple past and past participle bafflegabbed)

(rare) To use pretentious, incomprehensible, or overly technical language.

References edit

^ Quinion, Michael. "Bafflegab." World Wide Words, 25 Jun. 2005.

Joe Miller (2018 February 9) “Are these the worst examples of business jargon?”, in BBC News‎^[2], BBC

[1] Quinion, Michael. "Bafflegab." World Wide Words, 25 Jun. 2005.

[1]