gobbledygook n (1944) official, professional, or pretentious verbiage or jargon. The term was introduced by Maury Maverick, chairman of the US Smaller War Plants Corporation (and descendant of the cattle-owning Samuel A. Maverick, begetter of the word maverick. He did not invent it out of thin air, though: it is a variation on the earlier US slang gobbledygook, which originally denoted a prostitute specializing in felatio; this in turn was based on the phrase gobble the goo 'to perform felatio'. Presumably it was the sound of the word (suggestive of a fatuous turkey) that drew Maverick to it, rather than its meaning.-John Ayto, Movers and Shakers: A Chronology of Words That Shaped Our Age
“Every presidential message…should be (a) in English, (b) clear and trenchant in its style, (c) logical in its structure and (d) devoid of gobbledygook.” So wrote Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in a memo as an assistant to President John F. Kennedy in 1963, to a State Department functionary after wading through “the latest and worst of a long number of drafts” sent by the department for the President’s signature.
The striped-pants set are by no means the only people who indulge in gobbledygook. Over the years, the Pentagon has asked for bids on such items as aerodynamic personnel decelerators (parachutes), interlocking slide fasteners (zippers), and wood interdental stimulators (toothpicks); and a lieutenant of my basic-training company back in the late 1950s called the folding shovel with which I was all too familiar a “combat emplacement evacuator.”
Gobbledygook dates only from World War II. Credit for it goes to Maury Maverick, a former congressman from Texas (1935-39), who as chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation became tired of going to meetings where people rambled on about “maladjustments co-extensive with problem areas” and “alternative but nevertheless meaningful minimae.” He retaliated on March 30, 1944, with a memo decrying “gobbledygook language.” “Let’s stop pointing up programs, finalizing contracts that stem from district, regional or Washington levels ,” he wrote. “No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot.”
The colorful new word quickly caught on. People asked Maverick where gobbledygook came from, and in The New York Times Magazine on May 21 he replied: “I do not know.…Perhaps I was thinking of the old bearded turkey gobbler back in Texas who was always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity. At the end of his gobble there was a sort of gook.”
Incidentally, the Maverick family has another lexicographic distinction. Maury Maverick’s grandfather Samuel Augustus Maverick (1805–70) didn’t bother to brand calves on his Texas ranch. By 1867 unbranded calves had become known as mavericks, and the meaning of that word was extended within another 20 years to include people who showed a strong streak of independence.
Hugh Rawson, American Heritage, Volume 56, Issue 2
The striped-pants set are by no means the only people who indulge in gobbledygook. Over the years, the Pentagon has asked for bids on such items as aerodynamic personnel decelerators (parachutes), interlocking slide fasteners (zippers), and wood interdental stimulators (toothpicks); and a lieutenant of my basic-training company back in the late 1950s called the folding shovel with which I was all too familiar a “combat emplacement evacuator.”
Gobbledygook dates only from World War II. Credit for it goes to Maury Maverick, a former congressman from Texas (1935-39), who as chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation became tired of going to meetings where people rambled on about “maladjustments co-extensive with problem areas” and “alternative but nevertheless meaningful minimae.” He retaliated on March 30, 1944, with a memo decrying “gobbledygook language.” “Let’s stop pointing up programs, finalizing contracts that stem from district, regional or Washington levels ,” he wrote. “No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot.”
The colorful new word quickly caught on. People asked Maverick where gobbledygook came from, and in The New York Times Magazine on May 21 he replied: “I do not know.…Perhaps I was thinking of the old bearded turkey gobbler back in Texas who was always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity. At the end of his gobble there was a sort of gook.”
Incidentally, the Maverick family has another lexicographic distinction. Maury Maverick’s grandfather Samuel Augustus Maverick (1805–70) didn’t bother to brand calves on his Texas ranch. By 1867 unbranded calves had become known as mavericks, and the meaning of that word was extended within another 20 years to include people who showed a strong streak of independence.
Hugh Rawson, American Heritage, Volume 56, Issue 2
Gobbledygook
Stuart Chase worked for many years as a consultant to various government agencies; his other books include The Tyranny of Words (1938) and Democracy Under Pressure (1945).
Said Franklin Roosevelt, in one of his early presidential speeches: “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished..” Translated into standard bureaucratic prose his statement would read:
“Gobbledygook” itself is a good example of the way a language grows. There was no word for the event before Maverick’s invention; one had to say: “You know, that terrible, involved, polysyllabic language those government people use down in Washington.” Now one word takes the place of a dozen.
A British member of Parliament, A. P. Herbert, also exasperated with bureaucratic jargon, translated Nelson’s immortal phrase, “England expects every man to do his duty”:
An office manager sent this memo to his chief:
In August 1952 the U.S. Department of Agriculture put out a pamphlet entitled: “Cultural and Pathogenic Variability in Single-Condial and Hyphaltip Isolates of Hemlin-Thosporium Turcicum Pass.”
Seems it was about corn leaf disease.
On reaching the top of the Finsteraarhorn in 1845, M. Dollfus-Ausset, when he got his breath, exclaimed:
A government department announced:
LEGAL TALK
Gobbledygook not only flourishes in government bureaus but grows wild and lush in the law, the universities, and sometimes among the literati. Mr. Micawber was a master of gobbledygook, which he hoped would improve his fortunes. It is almost always found in offices too big for face-to-face talk. Gobbledygook can be defined as squandering words, packing a message with excess baggage and so introducing semantic “noise.” Or it can be scrambling words in a message so that meaning does not come through. The directions on cans, bottles, and packages for putting the contents to use are often a good illustration. Gobbledygook must not be confused with double talk, however, for the intentions of the sender are usually honest.
I offer you a round fruit and say, “Have an orange.” Not so an expert in legal phraseology, as parodied by editors of Labor:
The pedagogues may be less repetitious than the lawyers, but many use even longer words. It is a symbol of their calling to prefer Greek and Latin derivatives to Anglo-Saxon. Thus instead of saying: “I like short clear words,” many a professor would think it more seemly to say: “I prefer an abbreviated phraseology, distinguished for its lucidity.” Your professor is sometimes right, the longer word may carry the meaning better—but not because it is long. Allen Upward in his book The New Word warmly advocates Anglo-Saxon English as against what he calls “Mediterranean” English, with its polysyllables built up like a skyscraper.
Professional pedagogy, still alternating between the Middle Ages and modern science, can produce what Henshaw Ward once called the most repellent prose known to man. It takes an iron will to read as much as a page of it. Here is a sample of what is known in some quarters as “pedageese”:
In another kind of academic talk the author may display his learning to conceal a lack of ideas. A bright instructor, for instance, in need of prestige may select a common sense proposition for the subject of a learned monograph—say, “Modern cities are hard to live in”—and adorn it with imposing polysyllables: “Urban existence in the perpendicular declivities of megalopolis . . .” et cetera. He coins some new terms to transfix the reader—“mega-decible” or “strato-cosmopolis”—and works them vigorously. He is careful to add a page or two of differential equations to show the “scatter.” And then he publishes, with 147 footnotes and a bibliography to knock your eye out. If the authorities are dozing, it can be worth an associate professorship.
While we are on the campus, however, we must not forget that the technical language of the natural sciences and some terms in the social sciences, forbidding as they may sound to the layman, are quite necessary. Without them, specialists could not communicate what they find. Trouble arises when experts expect the uninitiated to understand the words; when they tell the jury, for instance, that the defendant is suffering from “circumorbital haematoma.”
Here are two authentic quotations. Which was written by a distinguished modern author, and which by a patient in a mental hospital? You will find the answer at the end of [this selection].
As government and business offices grow larger, the need for doing something about gobbledygook increases. Fortunately the biggest office in the world is working hard to reduce it. The Federal Security Agency in Washington, with nearly 100 million clients on its books, began analyzing its communication lines some years ago, with gratifying results. Surveys find trouble in three main areas: correspondence with clients about their social security problems, office memos, official reports.
Clarity and brevity, as well as common humanity, are urgently needed in this vast establishment which deals with disability, old age, and unemployment. The surveys found instead many cases of long-windedness, foggy meanings, clichés, and singsong phrases, and gross neglect of the reader’s point of view. Rather than talking to a real person, the writer was talking to himself. “We often write like a man walking on stilts.”
Here is a typical case of long-windedness:
Sometimes in a book which I am reading for information—not for literary pleasure—I run a pencil through the surplus words. Often I can cut a section to half its length with an improvement in clarity. Magazines like The Reader’s Digest have reduced this process to an art. Are long-windedness and obscurity a cultural lag from the days when writing was reserved for priests and cloistered scholars? The more words and the deeper the mystery, the greater their prestige and the firmer the hold on their jobs. And the better the candidate’s chance today to have his doctoral thesis accepted.
The FSA surveys found that a great deal of writing was obscure although not necessarily prolix. Here is a letter sent to more than 100,000 inquirers, a classic example of murky prose. To clarify it, one needs to add words, not cut them:
Many words and phrases in officialese seem to come out automatically, as if from lower centers of the brain. In this standardized prose people never get jobs, they “secure employment”; before and after become “prior to” and “subsequent to”; one does not do, one “performs”; nobody knows a thing, he is “fully cognizant”; one never says, he “indicates.” A great favorite at present is “implement.”
Some charming boners occur in this talking-in-one’s-sleep. For instance:
Instead of Use
give consideration to consider
make inquiry regarding inquire
is of the opinion believes
comes into conflict with conflicts
information which is of
Said Franklin Roosevelt, in one of his early presidential speeches: “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished..” Translated into standard bureaucratic prose his statement would read:
It is evident that a substantial number of persons within the Continental boundaries of the United States have inadequate financial resources with which to purchase the products of agricultural communities and industrial establishments. It would appear that for a considerable segment of the population, possibly as much as 33.3333* of the total, there are inadequate housing facilities, and an equally significant proportion is deprived of the proper types of clothing and nutriment.This rousing satire on gobbledygook—or talk among the bureaucrats—is adapted from a report prepared by the Federal Security Agency in an attempt to break out of the verbal squirrel cage. “Gobbledygook” was coined by an exasperated Congressman, Maury Maverick of Texas, and means using two, or three, or ten words in the place of one, or using a five-syllable word where a single syllable would suffice. Maverick was censuring the forbidding prose of executive departments in Washington, but the term has now spread to windy and pretentious language in general.
* Not carried beyond four places.
“Gobbledygook” itself is a good example of the way a language grows. There was no word for the event before Maverick’s invention; one had to say: “You know, that terrible, involved, polysyllabic language those government people use down in Washington.” Now one word takes the place of a dozen.
A British member of Parliament, A. P. Herbert, also exasperated with bureaucratic jargon, translated Nelson’s immortal phrase, “England expects every man to do his duty”:
England anticipates that, as regards the current emergency, personnel will face up to the issues, and exercise appropriately the functions allocated to their respective occupational groups.A New Zealand official made the following report after surveying a plot of ground for an athletic field:
It is obvious from the difference in elevation with relation to the short depth of the property that the contour is such as to preclude any reasonable developmental potential for active recreation.Seems the plot was too steep.
An office manager sent this memo to his chief:
Verbal contact with Mr. Blank regarding the attached notification of promotion has elicited the attached representation intimating that he prefers to decline the assignment.Seems Mr. Blank didn’t want the job.
A doctor testified at an English trial that one of the parties was suffering from “circumorbital haematoma.”Seems the party had a black eye.
In August 1952 the U.S. Department of Agriculture put out a pamphlet entitled: “Cultural and Pathogenic Variability in Single-Condial and Hyphaltip Isolates of Hemlin-Thosporium Turcicum Pass.”
Seems it was about corn leaf disease.
On reaching the top of the Finsteraarhorn in 1845, M. Dollfus-Ausset, when he got his breath, exclaimed:
The soul communes in the infinite with those icy peaks which seem to have their roots in the bowels of eternity.Seems he enjoyed the view.
A government department announced:
Voucherable expenditures necessary to provide adequate dental treatment required as adjunct to medical treatment being rendered a pay patient in in-patient status may be incurred as required at the expense of the Public Health Service.Seems you can charge your dentist bill to the Public Health Service. Or can you?
LEGAL TALK
Gobbledygook not only flourishes in government bureaus but grows wild and lush in the law, the universities, and sometimes among the literati. Mr. Micawber was a master of gobbledygook, which he hoped would improve his fortunes. It is almost always found in offices too big for face-to-face talk. Gobbledygook can be defined as squandering words, packing a message with excess baggage and so introducing semantic “noise.” Or it can be scrambling words in a message so that meaning does not come through. The directions on cans, bottles, and packages for putting the contents to use are often a good illustration. Gobbledygook must not be confused with double talk, however, for the intentions of the sender are usually honest.
I offer you a round fruit and say, “Have an orange.” Not so an expert in legal phraseology, as parodied by editors of Labor:
I hereby give and convey to you, all and singular, my estate and interests, right, title, claim and advantages of and in said orange, together with all rind, juice, pulp and pits, and all rights and advantages therein . . . anything hereinbefore or hereinafter or in any other deed or deeds, instrument or instruments of whatever nature or kind whatsoever, to the contrary, in any wise, notwithstanding.The state of Ohio, after five years of work, has redrafted its legal code in modern English, eliminating 4,500 sections and doubtless a blizzard of “whereases” and “hereinafters.” Legal terms of necessity must be closely tied to their referents, but the early solons tried to do this the hard way, by adding synonyms. They hoped to trap the physical event in a net of words, but instead they created a mumbo-jumbo beyond the power of the layman, and even many a lawyer, to translate. Legal talk is studded with tautologies, such as “cease and desist,” “give and convey,” “irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial.” Furthermore, legal jargon is a dead language; it is not spoken and it is not growing. An official of one of the big insurance companies calls their branch of it “bafflegab.” Here is a sample from his collection.
One-half to his mother, if living, if not to his father, and one-half to his mother-in-law, if living, if not to his mother, if living, if not to his father. Thereafter payment is to be made in a single sum to his brothers. On the one-half payable to his mother, if living, if not to his father, he does not bring in his mother-in-law as the next payee to receive, although on the one-half to his mother-in-law, he does bring in the mother or father.You apply for an insurance policy, pass the tests, and instead of a straightforward “here is your policy,” you receive something like this:
This policy is issued in consideration of the application therefor, copy of which application is attached hereto and made part hereof, and of the payment for said insurance on the life of the above-named insured.ACADEMIC TALK
The pedagogues may be less repetitious than the lawyers, but many use even longer words. It is a symbol of their calling to prefer Greek and Latin derivatives to Anglo-Saxon. Thus instead of saying: “I like short clear words,” many a professor would think it more seemly to say: “I prefer an abbreviated phraseology, distinguished for its lucidity.” Your professor is sometimes right, the longer word may carry the meaning better—but not because it is long. Allen Upward in his book The New Word warmly advocates Anglo-Saxon English as against what he calls “Mediterranean” English, with its polysyllables built up like a skyscraper.
Professional pedagogy, still alternating between the Middle Ages and modern science, can produce what Henshaw Ward once called the most repellent prose known to man. It takes an iron will to read as much as a page of it. Here is a sample of what is known in some quarters as “pedageese”:
Realization has grown that the curriculum or the experiences of learners change and improve only as those who are most directly involved examine their goals, improve their understandings and increase their skill in performing the tasks necessary to reach newly defined goals. This places the focus upon teacher, lay citizen and learner as partners in curricular improvement and as the individuals who must change, if there is to be curriculum change.I think there is an idea concealed here somewhere. I think it means: “If we are going to change the curriculum, teacher, parent, and student must all help.” The reader is invited to get out his semantic decoder and check on my translation. Observe there is no technical language in this gem of pedageese, beyond possibly the word “curriculum.” It is just a simple idea heavily oververbalized.
In another kind of academic talk the author may display his learning to conceal a lack of ideas. A bright instructor, for instance, in need of prestige may select a common sense proposition for the subject of a learned monograph—say, “Modern cities are hard to live in”—and adorn it with imposing polysyllables: “Urban existence in the perpendicular declivities of megalopolis . . .” et cetera. He coins some new terms to transfix the reader—“mega-decible” or “strato-cosmopolis”—and works them vigorously. He is careful to add a page or two of differential equations to show the “scatter.” And then he publishes, with 147 footnotes and a bibliography to knock your eye out. If the authorities are dozing, it can be worth an associate professorship.
While we are on the campus, however, we must not forget that the technical language of the natural sciences and some terms in the social sciences, forbidding as they may sound to the layman, are quite necessary. Without them, specialists could not communicate what they find. Trouble arises when experts expect the uninitiated to understand the words; when they tell the jury, for instance, that the defendant is suffering from “circumorbital haematoma.”
Here are two authentic quotations. Which was written by a distinguished modern author, and which by a patient in a mental hospital? You will find the answer at the end of [this selection].
1. Have just been to supper. Did not knowing what the woodchuck sent me here. How when the blue blue blue on the said anyone can do it that tries. Such is the presidential candidate.REDUCING THE GOBBLE
2. No history of a family to close with those and close. Never shall he be alone to be alone to be alone to be alone to be alone to lend a hand and leave it left and wasted.
As government and business offices grow larger, the need for doing something about gobbledygook increases. Fortunately the biggest office in the world is working hard to reduce it. The Federal Security Agency in Washington, with nearly 100 million clients on its books, began analyzing its communication lines some years ago, with gratifying results. Surveys find trouble in three main areas: correspondence with clients about their social security problems, office memos, official reports.
Clarity and brevity, as well as common humanity, are urgently needed in this vast establishment which deals with disability, old age, and unemployment. The surveys found instead many cases of long-windedness, foggy meanings, clichés, and singsong phrases, and gross neglect of the reader’s point of view. Rather than talking to a real person, the writer was talking to himself. “We often write like a man walking on stilts.”
Here is a typical case of long-windedness:
Gobbledygook as found: “We are wondering if sufficient time has passed so that you are in a position to indicate whether favorable action may now be taken on our recommendation for the reclassification of Mrs. Blank, junior clerk-stenographer, CAF 2, to assistant clerk-stenographer, CAF 3?”Another case:
Suggested improvement: “Have you yet been able to act on our recommendation to reclassify Mrs. Blank?”
Although the Central Efficiency Rating Committee recognizes that there are many desirable changes that could be made in the present efficiency rating system in order to make it more realistic and more workable than it now is, this committee is of the opinion that no further change should be made in the present system during the current year. Because of conditions prevailing thoroughout the country and the resultant turnover in personnel, and difficulty in administering the Federal programs, further mechanical improvement in the present rating system would require staff retraining and other administrative expense which would seem best withheld until the official termination of hostilities, and until restoration of regular operations.The FSA invites us to squeeze the gobbledygook out of this statement. Here is my attempt:
The Central Efficiency Rating Committee recognizes that desirable changes could be made in the present system. We believe, however, that no change should be attempted until the war is over.This cuts the statement from 111 to 30 words, about one-quarter of the original, but perhaps the reader can do still better. What of importance have I left out?
Sometimes in a book which I am reading for information—not for literary pleasure—I run a pencil through the surplus words. Often I can cut a section to half its length with an improvement in clarity. Magazines like The Reader’s Digest have reduced this process to an art. Are long-windedness and obscurity a cultural lag from the days when writing was reserved for priests and cloistered scholars? The more words and the deeper the mystery, the greater their prestige and the firmer the hold on their jobs. And the better the candidate’s chance today to have his doctoral thesis accepted.
The FSA surveys found that a great deal of writing was obscure although not necessarily prolix. Here is a letter sent to more than 100,000 inquirers, a classic example of murky prose. To clarify it, one needs to add words, not cut them:
In order to be fully insured, an individual must have earned $50 or more in covered employment for as many quarters of coverage as half the calendar quarters elapsing between 1936 and the quarter in which he reaches age 65 or dies, whichever first occurs.Probably no one without the technical jargon of the office could translate this: nevertheless, it was sent out to drive clients mad for seven years. One poor fellow wrote back: “I am no longer in covered employment. I have an outside job now.”
Many words and phrases in officialese seem to come out automatically, as if from lower centers of the brain. In this standardized prose people never get jobs, they “secure employment”; before and after become “prior to” and “subsequent to”; one does not do, one “performs”; nobody knows a thing, he is “fully cognizant”; one never says, he “indicates.” A great favorite at present is “implement.”
Some charming boners occur in this talking-in-one’s-sleep. For instance:
The problem of extending coverage to all employees, regardless of size, is not as simple as surface appearances indicate.In its manual to employees, the FSA suggests the following:
Though the proportions of all males and females in ages 16-45 are essentially the same . . .
Diary cattle, usually and commonly embraced in dairying . . .
Instead of Use
give consideration to consider
make inquiry regarding inquire
is of the opinion believes
comes into conflict with conflicts
information which is of
a confidential nature confidential information
Professional or office gobbledygook often arises from using the passive rather than the active voice. Instead of looking you in the eye, as it were, and writing “This act requires . . . ,” the office worker looks out of the window and writes: “It is required by this statute that . . . : When the bureau chief says, “We expect Congress to cut your budget,” the message is only too clear; but usually he says, “It is expected that the departmental budget estimates will be reduced by Congress.”
GOBBLED: “All letters prepared for the signature of the Administrator will be single spaced.”Only People Can Read
UNGOBBLED: “Single space all letters for the Administrator.” (Thus cutting 13 words to 7.)
The FSA surveys pick up the point . . . that human communication involves a listener as well as a speaker. Only people can read, though a lot of writing seems to be addressed to beings in outer space. To whom are you talking? The sender of the officialese message often forgets the chap on the other end of the line.
A woman with two small children wrote the FSA asking what she should do about payments, as her husband has lost his memory. “If he never gets able to work,” she said, “and stays in an institution would I be able to draw any benefits? . . . I don’t know how I am going to live and raise my children since his is disable to work. Please give me some information . . . .”
To this human appeal, she received a shattering blast of gobbledygook, beginning, “State unemployment compensation laws do not provide any benefits for sick or disabled individuals . . . in order to qualify an individual must have a certain number of quarters of coverage . . .” et cetera, et cetera. Certainly if the writer had been thinking about the poor woman he would not have dragged in unessential material about old-age insurance. If he had pictured a mother without means to care for her children, he would have told her where she might get help—from the local office which handles aid to dependent children, for instance.
Gobbledygook of this kind would largely evaporate if we thought of our messages as two way—in the above case, if we pictured ourselves talking on the doorstep of a shabby house to a woman with two children tugging at her skirts, who in her distress does not know which way to turn.
Results of the Survey
The FSA survey showed that office documents could be cut 20 to 50 percent, with an improvement in clarity and a great saving to taxpayers in paper and payrolls.
A handbook was prepared and distributed to key officials. They read it, thought about it, and presently began calling section meetings to discuss gobbledygook. More booklets were ordered, and the local output of documents began to improve. A Correspondence Review Section was established as a kind of laboratory to test murky messages. A supervisor could send up samples for analysis and suggestions. The handbook is now used for training new members; and many employees keep it on their desks along with the dictionary. Outside the Bureau some 25,000 copies have been sold (at 20 cents each) to individuals, governments, business firms, all over the world. It is now used officially in the Veterans Administration and in the Department of Agriculture.
The handbook makes clear the enormous amount of gobbledygook which automatically spreads in any large office, together with ways and means to keep it under control. I would guess that at least half of all the words circulating around the bureaus of the world are “irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial”—to use a favorite legalism; or are just plain “unnecessary”—to ungobble it.
My favorite story of removing the gobble from gobbledygook concerns the Bureau of Standards at Washington. I have told it before but perhaps the reader will forgive the repetition. A New York plumber wrote the Bureau that he had found hydrochloric acid fine for cleaning drains, and was it harmless? Washington replied: “The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but the chlorine residue is incompatible with metallic permanence.”
The plumber wrote back that he was mighty glad the Bureau agreed with him. The Bureau replied with a note of alarm: “We cannot assume responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residues with hydrochloric acid, and suggest that you use an alternate procedure.” The plumber was happy to learn that the Bureau still agreed with him.
Whereupon Washington exploded: “Don’t use hydrochloric acid: it eats hell out of the pipes!”
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