gibberish
/ˈd͡ʒɪ.bə.ɹɪʃ/
gibberish noun: speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless.
Noun
gibberish (usually uncountable, plural gibberishes)
- Speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless.
- Such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with.1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 12, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC
- Could it be, after all, that the whole story was true, and the writing on the sherd was not a forgery, or the invention of some crack-brained, long-forgotten individual? And if so, could it be that Leo was the man that She was waiting for - the dead man who was to be born again! Impossible! The...1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
- Needlessly obscure or overly technical language.
- A language game, comparable to pig Latin, in which one inserts a nonsense syllable before the first vowel in each syllable of a word.
Adjective
gibberish (comparative more gibberish, superlative most gibberish)
gibberish meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
gibberish in Hindi
- unintelligible speech or writing
- अनाप-शनाप anāp-śanāp
- needlessly obscure or overly technical language
- अनाप-शनाप anāp-śanāp
gibberish in Tamil
- பயனிலாத்தகவல்
gibberish in Urdu
- gibberish
- لغو lağv
gibberish in Malayalam
- gibberish
- ഞഞ്ഞാമിഞ്ഞാ ñaññāmiññā
More languagesFewer languages
- gibberish in Kannada
- ಹುರುಳಿಲ್ಲದ ಮಾತು
- gibberish in Tagalog
- alimim, alim-im
- gibberish in Arabic
- رَطَانَة raṭāna, ثَرْثَرَة ṯarṯara, بَرْبَرَة barbara
- gibberish in Indonesian
- pepesan kosong, bahasa raban
Examples of gibberish in a sentence
- His jargon-filled talk was gibberish to uninitiated listeners, but it was clear and concise to practitioners.
- His jargon-filled talk was gibberish to the uninitiated, but it was clear and concise to practitioners.
- We all knew he'd gone bonkers after he started speaking only gibberish.
Synonyms of gibberish
Forms of gibberish
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | gibberishes |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more gibberish |
| superlative | most gibberish |
Origin of gibberish
First attested mid-16th century. Origin obscure. Possibly from *gibber, of onomatopoeic origin imitating to the sound of chatter, possibly from or influenced by jabber, + -ish denoting the name of a language (compare English, Finnish, Spanish, etc.). The verb gibber, first attested circa 1600, is usually regarded as a back-formation from gibberish.
Words formed from gibberish
Questions about gibberish
- What does gibberish mean?
- Gibberish means speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless.
- What is gibberish in Hindi?
- Gibberish in Hindi is अनाप-शनाप (anāp-śanāp). See Gibberish meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is gibberish?
- Gibberish can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce gibberish?
- Gibberish is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒɪ.bə.ɹɪʃ/.
- What is the plural of gibberish?
- The plural of gibberish is gibberishes.
Words near gibberish in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gibberish (page history and authors); gibberish (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); لغو (Urdu) (page history and authors); ഞഞ്ഞാമിഞ്ഞാ (Malayalam) (page history and authors); gibberish (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gibberish.wav.
Cite this entry: “gibberish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gibberish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.