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