Gibberish

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gibberish is a generic term in English for talking that sounds like speech, but has no actual meaning. This meaning has also been extended to meaningless text or gobbledygook. The common theme in gibberish statements is a lack of literal sense, which can also be described as a presence of nonsense.

Contents 1 Origin of the term 2 See also 3 External links 4 References

[edit] Origin of the term

Look up gibberish in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The term is first seen in English in the early 16th century ^[1]. A common theory is that the word comes from the name of the famous 8th-century Islamic alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, whose name was Latinized as "Geber", thus the term "gibberish" arose as a reference to the incomprehensible technical jargon often used by Jabir and other alchemists who followed.^[2]

A second explanation is from the British colony Gibraltar (from Arabic Gabal-Tariq, meaning Mountain of Tariq), whose residents frequently speak in Spanish and English during their conversations. Gibraltarians will often start a sentence in Spanish and switch to English halfway through, making it difficult for non-locals to follow.

The word may also derive from the word "jabber" ("to talk nonsense"), with the "-ish" suffix to signify a language.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] See also

• Double Dutch (language game)
• Grammelot
• Jabberwocky — English poem written in nonsense
• The Ketchup Song
• Lorem ipsum
• Chacarron Macarron - song with (Spanish) nonsense lyrics
• Mojibake — Random nonsense characters generated by foreign text
• Mumbo Jumbo (phrase)
• Nonsense
• Scat singing
• Simlish
• Vonlenska
• Swedish Chef

[edit] External links

• A statistical gibberish generator based on Markov chains
• Translate gibberish into Hebrew
• Pronounceable gibberish generator
• The Online Dictionary of Language Terminology
• Bendonium World

[edit] References

1. ^ Chantrell, Glynnis (2002). The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 231. 
2. ^ Seaborg, Glenn T. (March 1980), "Our heritage of the elements", Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B (Springer Boston) 11 (1): 5–19