Word of the Day
: May 11, 2015technobabble
playWhat It Means
: technical jargon
technobabble in Context
The manual for the computer program used so much technobabble that I was completely lost.
"Flitting comfortably between highbrow wit and gleeful crassness, Silicon Valley elicits more than its share of honest-to-goodness belly laughs, whether or not you’re up on the latest technobabble." - Portland (Maine) Press-Herald, April 5, 2015
Did You Know?
Technobabble was formed by combining techno- (meaning "technical or technological") with babble ("continuous meaningless vocal sounds"), and unsurprisingly suggests language which sounds highly technical and is incomprehensible to the listener. Techno- as a combining form has given English speakers a number of interesting words, including but not limited to technocrat, technophile and technophobia, techno-thriller, technopreneur, and even technostructure ("the network of professionally skilled scientists, engineers, and administrators that tends to control the economy"). Techno- itself traces back to the same root word that gave us technology, namely the Greek word technē, meaning "art, craft, or practical skill."
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Test Your Vocabulary
Fill in the blanks to create a word for wordy and unintelligible jargon: go _ _ led _ go _ _. The answer is …
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