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mumbo jumbo
[muhm-boh juhm-boh]
noun
plural
mumbo jumbosmeaningless incantation or ritual.
senseless or pretentious language, usually designed to obscure an issue, confuse a listener, or the like.
an object of superstitious awe or reverence.
(initial capital letters)the guardian of western Sudan villages symbolized by a masked man who combats evil and punishes women for breaches of tribal laws.
mumbo jumbo
/ ˈʌəʊ /
noun
foolish religious reverence, ritual, or incantation
meaningless or unnecessarily complicated language
an object of superstitious awe or reverence
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of mumbo jumbo1
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of mumbo jumbo1
Example Sentences
Granting them clemency, McConnell concluded, “would mean that society’s most forceful condemnation of white supremacy and antisemitism must give way to legal mumbo jumbo.”
Sometimes, the words of a court room amount to mumbo jumbo to the occasional visitor.
You’ve been quoted as saying that architecture is too often treated as a fine art, “delicately wrapped in mumbo jumbo,” when in fact it incorporates disciplines including science, math, and engineering.
He was speaking his usual mumbo jumbo about hardcore software-writing and “the code stack” — but, in essence, he was right.
Regina wasn’t buying his sales pitch and wrote back that Armstrong and his church were feeding Bobby a line of mumbo jumbo and engaging in fear mongering.
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When To Use
When someone isn’t making any sense, we might joke that they’re talking mumbo jumbo. However, it may not originally mean “a whole lot of mumbling.”Mumbo jumbo may come from maamajomboo, the Mandinka (a West African language) word for a masked male dancer who was involved in some arcane rituals.The potential problem with mumbo jumbo, though, is that it may have historically likened the speech or customs of African peoples to “nonsense,” as if unintelligible or amusing in some way to the European colonists who introduced or modified maamajomboo into the English language.If knowing the history of mumbo jumbo has got you reflecting on your word choices, this slideshow, "These Common 51Թs Have Offensive Histories," discusses many other words whose place in your vocab you may want to reconsider.
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