babeldom

Noun capitalized: Babeldom

Babeldom (countable and uncountable, plural Babeldoms)

1. A confused mix of voices, languages, or words and ideas.
   • Only a German hobbledehoy was coarse with me, and cursed at my aping foreign Babeldoms, and thundered out in his beery bass, " At a Tscherman mummery must the Tschennan Tscherman speak."1880, William Stigand, The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine, page 107
   • Notwithstanding all the shams which, to use Mr. Carlyle's phrases, have been exploded, all the Babeldoms which have been talked out, all the mockeries, delusions, and snares which have been exposed, it yet remains that marriage is the be-all and end-all of the British maiden's existence.1881, E.H. Yates, “The Forlorn Hope”, in Library of Famous Fiction, page 102
2. A state of noisy confusion and chaotic activity
   • HPSCHD is, literally, describable — six harpsichords, movie and still projections of lunar and terrestrial landscapes (courtesy of NASA), a vertiginous polyglot of quaquaversal dispersion, a Babeldom of visual and aural stimuli — but, like nearly all of Cage's work, its impact lies totally in the...1975, Music Journal - Volume 33, page 53
   • For the less well educated audience, another interpretation "programmed" by Pushkin was possible - the perception of a clash of forces as a spectacle of Babeldom.2006, Chester S. L. Dunning, Caryl Emerson, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, The uncensored Boris Godunov, →ISBN, page 494
3. A multiplicity of mutually unintelligible languages.
   • In connection with both are night-schools for adults, which are also largely attended by Arabs, Copts, Jews, Levantines, and Europeans of almost every nationality: the waifs-and-strays of Babeldom who have no time for school-work by day, but who take industriously to it six evenings a week under...1877, James Carlile McCoan, Egypt as it is, page 221
   • Rotary has proved that the language of friendship is readily understood regardless of the Babeldom of tongues.1930 February, Everett W. Hills, “Language of Friendship”, in The Rotarian, volume 36, number 2, page 19