Word: gobbledygook
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...Department last week turned the heat on the avalanche of contract cancellation work that U.S. industry faces at war's end. The furnace to be used for this job was called, in governmental gobbledygook. Predetermination of Contract Cancellation. That jawbreaker meant something quite simple: war contractors can now pretend that their contracts have actually been canceled. Thus they can clear out of the way much of the time-eating labor that would hold up a swift shift to making peace goods...
Maury Maverick, the Texas tornado, further denounced and denned Washington's "gobbledygook" language (TIME. April 10). Said "blah"-maddened Maverick in the New York Times Magazine: "First, the word: it is long, sounds foreign, has four stories. You walk up without benefit of elevator. Second, its definition: talk or writing which is long, pompous, vague, involved. ... It is also talk or writing . . . with repetition over & over again, all of which could have been said in a few words...
Scientific Gobbledygool. The meeting also heard 132 other papers on psychiatry, many of them about the effects of battle on the nervous system, most of them in a kind of scientific gobbledygook ("mal-orientation," "preneurotic interval") very baffling to laymen. Some highlights...
Maury Maverick, fluent, fiery but literate Texas talker, railed against what he called Washington's "gobbledygook" language. To employes of the Smaller War Plants Corp. Chairman Maverick wrote: "Let's stop 'pointing-up' programs, 'finalizing' contracts that 'stem from' district, regional, or Washington 'levels.' There are no 'levels,' Washington local government is as high as Washington government. . . . Anyone using the words 'activation' or 'implementation' will be shot...