Gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes gobbledegoo) is any text containing jargon or especially convoluted English that results in it being excessively hard to understand or even incomprehensible. "Bureaucratese" is one form of gobbledygook.
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According to Michael Quinion on his World Wide Words website the word was first coined on 21 May 1944 by Maury Maverick, a lawyer from Texas. His comments, recorded in the New York Times Magazine, were made when Maverick was the Democratic chairman of the US Congress Smaller War Plants Committee. He was being critical of the obscure language used by other committee members. The allusion was to a turkey, “always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity”. It is sometimes abbreviated slightly to gobbledygoo.[1]
Nixon's Oval Office tape from June 14 shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon.
Former United States President Ronald Reagan explained tax law revisions in an address to the nation, 28 May 1985:
Michael Shanks, former chairman to the National Consumer Council of Great Britain, characterizes professional gobbledygook as sloppy jargon intended to confuse nonspecialists:
The word has been used anachronistically in fiction set before the invention of the term. For example, in the British sitcom Blackadder Goes Forth, set in 1917 (27 years before the word was first used), the character General Melchett declares that he likes the term and wants to "use it more often in conversation". In another British series, Robin Hood, set in the beginning of the 15th century, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Vaisey, uses the term to refer to Latin, in those days commonly used in the church. In the film The Green Mile, character Paul Edgecombe replies to his wife Jan, "Oh, you know doctors - gobbledygook mostly." The film version of The Green Mile is set in 1935, 9 years before the word's creation.
In the film Carry On Regardless, the landlord to the Helping Hands offices speaks in gobbledygook, causing a misunderstanding until one of the Helping Hands meets him and can translate.
In the "How to Irritate People" airplane sketch by Monty Python, gobbledygook is used as a way of frightening passengers in an airplane.
Former Irish tennis star Bryan Crowley when describing his chat with the two Danish heroes abroad in San Luis Obispo :"Them Danish lads have perfect English, but when they speak their own language it sounds like a haype of Gobblydegook."
The term has also been used as a name for various fictional characters, albums, etc. In the video game Final Fantasy VI there is an enemy named Gobbledygook. The British children's show Alphabet Castle has a character called Gobbledygook the turkey, who always gets his words and letters jumbled up. Gobbledegook was a goblin comic character semi-regularly appearing in his own column in the fantasy gaming magazine White Dwarf until about issue 100. In a similar vein, the "Harry Potter" series names Gobbledegook as the language of the stories' version of goblins. "The Gobbledy Gooker" was a character in the World Wrestling Federation's Survivor Series, who "hatched" from an egg and then proceeded to dance with the announcer in the ring; widely considered one of the worst gimmicks created by wrestling fans, it inspired the now-annual WrestleCrap Award for worst gimmick of the year. "Gobbledigook" is also the first single from Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós's album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust.
From 1973 to 1977, actor Whitman Mayo portrayed Grady Wilson on the NBC television classic, Sanford and Son. Whenever Grady was at a loss for words, he would exclaim, "Good Gobbledygook."
During World War Two Eleanora Wenz Anderson while working as an illustrator in California designed a character to illustrate the term. The character resembled a caricature of Woody Woodpecker with an exaggerated top knot.
A Progressive Insurance commercial in the United States contains the word "gobbledygook."
In English, other common idioms indicating difficulty in understanding complicated language are: "It is all Greek to me" or "talking double Dutch ". For complicated written language, a common expression is that something is "written in hieroglyphics". Bafflegab is a synonym.
In the midwestern region of the United States, it is also the name for a popular breakfast dish made up of eggs, bacon, and buttered toast mixed in a bowl together and served with toast on the side.