academese

[ak-uh-duh-meez, -mees, uh-kad-uh-]

noun

1. pedantic, pretentious, and often confusing academic jargon.

   a presumably scholarly article written in incomprehensible academese.

Word History and Origins

Origin of academese¹

academ(ic) + -ese

Example Sentences

He took down from his shelf a bound copy of his PhD dissertation from Stanford, where he studied dramatic literature, and shared that he wanted to translate the manuscript from “academese into English.”

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“The conflict we engendered was performative class conflict,” Koenig says in perfect academese.

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There are the peddlers of “civil disagreement” — I like to think of them as trolls in tweed blazers, who cloak themselves in academese and are “just trying to have a measured conversation.”

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To translate from academese: An "egalitarian-internationalist platform" means the kind of political platform that articulates a shared, global struggle among all of the poor and working-class people around the world — in other words, a class-conscience platform that recognizes that rich people are not on the same side as the rest of us, and have different interests and are eager to exploit us.

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The second act, which shifts between a 2003 symposium, steeped in academese, and a 1973 talk show, steeped in gin, is more like a screwball tragedy.

Read more on New York Times