Meaning of mumbo jumbo | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A deity or other supernatural being said to have been worshipped by certain West African peoples; an idol.
   countable, historical, uncountable
2. Any object of superstition; religious words and/or actions which are seen as superstitious or fraudulent.
   countable, uncountable
3. Any confusing or meaningless speech; nonsense, gibberish.
   broadly, countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw⟳ into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawpaw be utterly abolished.”

“Rev. Quack's healing services are little more than mumbo jumbo.”

“"And what have⟳ you got to say⟳? Another lot of mumbo-jumbo like⟳ your learned associates over there?"”

“What is going on in all this religious mumbo-jumbo that is so foreign to the positivism of contemporary scholarship is a reenactment of the history of the soul before the beginning of terrestrial evolution.”

“Football lingo is mumbo jumbo to me.”

“He escaped from that experience⟳ confounded, horrified, and conscious of degradation. Those infernal bandogs of the law had treated him as a piece of insensate property to their drivelling mumbo-jumbo, as if mere contact⟳ with it had robbed him of all rights to the dignity and integrity of his own⟳ ego.”

“When it is truly instinct, brain matter⟳, diastole, systole, / Reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more / Than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:”

“He also said Britain would be “governed by science, not mumbo-jumbo” when looking at whether imported food was acceptable for consumption in the UK.”

CEFR level