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gibberish

/ˈd͡ʒɪ.bə.ɹɪʃ/noun, adjective

gibberish is a noun meaning “Speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-I-B-B-E-R-I-S-H and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 1 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of gibberish is gibberishes.

What does gibberish mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Speech or writing that is unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless.

  2. 2

    Needlessly obscure or overly technical language.

  3. 3

    A language game, comparable to pig Latin, in which one inserts a nonsense syllable before the first vowel in each syllable of a word.

adjective

  1. 1

    unintelligible, incoherent or meaningless

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce gibberish?

  • /ˈd͡ʒɪ.bə.ɹɪʃ/

Gibberish has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-gibberish.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of gibberish

  • gibberishes plural
  • more gibberish comparative
  • most gibberish superlative

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is gibberish?

Gibberish appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 30,017th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Gibberish in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchbaragouin, charabia, chinois, galimatias (unintelligible speech or writing)
GermanKauderwelsch, Kokolores, Gequassel, Geschwafel (unintelligible speech or writing), Fachchinesisch (needlessly obscure or overly technical language)
Portuguesealgaravia, grego (unintelligible speech or writing), jargão (needlessly obscure or overly technical language)
Spanishalgarabía, farfulla, monserga, guirigay (unintelligible speech or writing), galimatías (needlessly obscure or overly technical language)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does gibberish come from?

First attested mid-16th century. Origin obscure. Possibly from *gibber, of onomatopoeic origin imitating to the sound of chatter, possibly from or influenced by jabber, + -ish denoting the name of a language (compare English, Finnish, Spanish, etc.). The verb gibber, first attested circa 1600, is usually regarded as a back-formation from gibberish.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).