Definition:
- The specialized language of a professional, occupational, or other group, often meaningless to outsiders. See also:
- An often negative term for odd language of various kinds, including slang or speech perceived as gibberish. See also:
Etymology:
From Old French, "the twittering of birds, meaningless talk"
Examples and Observations:
- "Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas."
(Eric Bentley) - "Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false."
(David Lehman) - "'Hygienic treatment' is funeral jargon for the temporary preservation of a corpse."
(Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death) - "Should jargon be censored? Many people think it should. However, close examination of jargon shows that, although some of it is vacuous pretentiousness, and therefore dysphemistic, its proper use is both necessary and unobjectionable."
(K. Allen and K. Burridge, Forbidden Words, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006) - "Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs--roll 'em over and a package of Kents,
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late."
(Tom Waits, "Ghosts Of Saturday Night") - "Generally, when people use jargon not to communicate but to impress their audiences with their importance . . . or use it to announce membership in a group, communication suffers and the jargon can quickly degenerate into something close to the twittering of birds."
(W. Lutz, "Jargon," Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1992)
- "Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas."
Pronunciation: JAR-gun
