gibberish
Americannoun
-
meaningless or unintelligible talk or writing.
- Synonyms:
- gobbledegook, drivel, gabble, babble, foolishness, nonsense
-
talk or writing containing many obscure, pretentious, or technical words.
noun
-
rapid chatter like that of monkeys
-
incomprehensible talk; nonsense
Etymology
Origin of gibberish
1545–55; apparently gibber + -ish 1, on the model of language names so formed
Explanation
Gibberish is nonsense sounds or writing. A baby's babble is often called gibberish. When someone is speaking a foreign language you don't understand, what they're saying may sound like gibberish to you. To gibber or jabber is to talk rapidly and excitedly without making any sense. Gibberish, ending in -ish like Spanish or English — is the "language" of people who gibber and jabber. The word also applies to writing — if you have really bad handwriting, your teacher might say you write in gibberish. And if your teacher can somehow read your handwriting but your essay is poorly organized, the content of your writing can be called gibberish as well.
Vocabulary lists containing gibberish
100 SAT Words Beginning with "G"
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
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The Poet X
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
We must move beyond parsing each word, every day, searching for meaning in gibberish.
From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026
And these worlds aren’t even real, just ones and zeros merged to form a network of communication that sometimes feels like incoherent gibberish.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2026
When I pointed out that its predictions were wrong, and included teams that weren’t even in the competition, it admitted I was right, promised to do better next time, and then produced more gibberish.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 18, 2026
The telltale clues included gibberish coordinates embedded in the fake image, which spread across sites including Instagram, Threads and X.
From Barron's ● Mar. 9, 2026
What they said was as unintelligible as my mother’s gibberish; they too experienced the same physical symptoms as she.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
