Word: mumbo-jumbo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most intelligent laymen regard the jargon of lawyers as an obvious trade trick, a professional pig-Latin calculated to obscure otherwise simple matters and impress clients with the indispensability of their services. Fortunately, most of their pompous verbal mumbo-jumbo is harmless tautology. But at least one legal usage- "and/or"-is dangerous nonsense...
Achilles Had a Heel (by Martin Flavin: Walter Hampden, producer) is a distressing piece of mumbo-jumbo showing Tragedian Hampden as a Negro elephant-keeper in a zoo. Mr. Hampden and the invisible elephant love each other for being big. strong, noble. When a high-yellow wench, urged on by a jealous monkey-keeper, saps Mr. Hampden's integrity, the elephant, outraged, knocks his friend down with a blast of dusty air. The monkey-keeper gets the elephant job. makes a mistake, is promptly killed...
...medicaler" with bitter resignation but he is overjoyed when she bears a boy who, he believes, will inherit the Hofnagel power. When the baby contracts diphtheria Hofnagel prevents his son-in-law from administering antitoxin by shooting him in the shoulder, kills the baby with his own mumbo-jumbo. These events are developed in a sharp atmosphere of authenticity, tautly directed by Arthur Beckhard, expert handler of family groups (Another Language). Good performances: William F. Schoeller as Hofnagel, Jules Epailly as a rival wizard, Victor Kilian as a slow-witted yokel...
...advertising agency is from first-hand knowledge; Author Dorothy Sayres has been a successful copywriter in a London agency. More than that, she is a member of London's famed Detection Club, an informal organization for promoting honesty and high literary standards in fictional crime-solving. "No Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Death Rays, not even Trap Doors." This, sworn on the oath "as you hope to increase your sales," is part of the ritual of the Detection Club, devised by such members as Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton. Year ago appeared The Floating Admiral, joint production...
Centre of the mumbo-jumbo belt is green Brusa where orthodoxy flared. It lies across the Sea of Marmora from Istanbul (Constantinople). It was the first Ottoman capital and might have been the capital of the Turkish Republic instead of white-cement, Babbittized Angora, had it not been too near...