Gobbledygook

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tina calling from Kewaskam, Wisconsin.

What can we do for you today?

I thought of a word that we use around our house a lot, which is gobbledygook.

And does anyone else use that word, and how do they use it?

Yes, they do.

Yes.

And there’s a great story.

And Martha has a great entry for it in one of her books.

I do.

We love this kind of etymological question because the etymology is very clear.

Yeah.

Well, it goes back to Congressman Maury Maverick, who was a Texas congressman.

And in 1944, he was quite the stickler for language.

And he was the chair of a congressional committee.

And he was very upset with the jargon and blather coming out of so many Washington offices.

I mean, can you imagine, Tina?

Sure. For a politician, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so he was unhappy with the bloated kind of writing that people were doing.

And so he issued this official memo to the people who worked for him, urging them to speak in plain English and be succinct.

And one of the things he said was that this kind of blather is gobbledygook.

He called it gobbledygook.

And later he was interviewed about this, and he said that he wasn’t quite sure why the word gobbledygook sprang into his mind.

But it reminded him, when he would read these badly written papers, it reminded him of strutting turkeys back home in Texas.

And they would gobble, gobble, gobble.

And then at the end of the gobble, he said there was a kind of goch.

Boy, I wonder if my husband heard that on another radio show, maybe Rush Limbaugh or something.

Oh, it’s possible.

Yeah, the kind of bureaucratic and political effluent isn’t limited to Washington.

He’s also used it to, like, smear stuff on gaskets and things, because we’re farmers out here.

So, schlup some of that gobbledygook on there.

Oh, really?

Oh, interesting.

Schlup some of that gobbledygook.

Is it schlup or schlub?

Schlup.

Schlup.

Schlup.

Oh, interesting.

With a P.

So, it just means, like, some random substance.

Yeah, schlup it on there.

The rest of us might say goop.

He says gobbledygook.

Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Well, wonderful.

Well, now I feel enlightened.

Clearly, you were already.

Or you wouldn’t have called.

You wouldn’t have called if you weren’t enlightened.

And I tell all my friends A Way with Words, yeah.

Thank you, Tina.

You are a lot of fun.

I’ll probably call back again with a couple new words.

Okay.

Thanks, Tina.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Shlop that gobbledygook.

So the question on my mind, though, Martha.

Yes.

How is this Maverick related to the Maverick, the one which we get the term Maverick, you?

The one that was the big deal in the 2008 political election.

Yes, that was another Texas politician.

Was he related to this same Maverick?

Yes, that was his grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick.

And so this is a family of loud, plain-spoken folks who got no problem with saying what’s on their mind.

Exactly. And Samuel Augustus Maverick was known for having a mind of his own and not following convention.

And one of the things he would do is let his cattle run free and not brand them.

And so if people saw an unbranded animal, they would say, oh, that must be a maverick.

And so the metaphor went from cattle to politicians.

Oh, interesting. Very good.

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