Gobbledegook

​Word of the day has previously discussed Samuel Maverick, the famously independent Texas rancher.

His grandson, Congressman Maury Maverick [1895-1954], chaired the Smaller War Plants Committee. Commenting on his fellow committee members in May 1944, he pictured them as turkeys, “always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity.”

The phrase struck a chord and has become a familiar description of language so complicated and heavy with jargon that it cannot be understood by outsiders. Organizations such as the Campaign for Plain English have voiced the general public’s displeasure with gobbledegook.