I was attracted to looking at this word ‘gobbledygook’ by a headline in The Australian newspaper.
It was a headline over an article by the great economist Judith Sloan.
Here is exactly what that headline said, “PM masters the art of gobbledygook.’
So, before I unpack the word, here’s the background. Judith Sloan quoted the following statement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: ‘Our commitment to responsible economic management means we are always looking to eliminate waste and drive maximum value for every taxpayer dollar. But responsible economic management is also about the responsibility we have to help people under pressure, here and now.’
You might look at those words and see nothing much wrong with them.
But Judith Sloan looks at that claim as an economist, so she says, ‘This is basically gobbledygook. The government will spend like crazy to “help people under pressure”, but doing so means that people are under pressure for longer because spending is too high. Go figure.’
So, the PM’s words are in okay English sentences but are ‘economic gobbledygook’.
The word ‘gobbledygook’ originated in America and is recorded from 1944.
But it must have already been well known because that appearance is in a memo telling people involved in war work to ‘avoid gobbledygook.’
The Oxford English Dictionary says the word was coined out of an earlier expression (‘gobble’) that was used to name the way poultry (especially turkeys) sound.
So, its beginning was imitative or echoic—because turkeys do make a sound rather like ‘gobble, gobble’ don’t they?
That is the history of the word. And it tells us that (based on her economic expertise) Judith Sloan says when our Prime Minister talks economics he is gobbling away like poultry!
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