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bafflegab (BAF-uhl-gab) - n., gobbledegook, unclear and wordy jargon.
Especially the use of bureaucratese (or certain scholarly styles) that obscures communication. Coined in 1952 by Milton Smith of the US Department of Commerce (from baffle, to bewilder + slang gab, to talk) to describe special blend of “incomprehensibility, ambiguity, verbosity and complexity” of a directive from the Office of Price Stabilization. Smith's own illustrative definition of the word, when presented with a plaque to honor his invention, was "multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilized for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies."
---L.
Especially the use of bureaucratese (or certain scholarly styles) that obscures communication. Coined in 1952 by Milton Smith of the US Department of Commerce (from baffle, to bewilder + slang gab, to talk) to describe special blend of “incomprehensibility, ambiguity, verbosity and complexity” of a directive from the Office of Price Stabilization. Smith's own illustrative definition of the word, when presented with a plaque to honor his invention, was "multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilized for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies."
---L.
