From Richard Nordquist,
Your Guide to Grammar & Composition.
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Definition:

1. The specialized language of a professional, occupational, or other group, often meaningless to outsiders. See The Language of Baseball.
2. An often negative term for outlandish language of various kinds, including slang or speech perceived as gibberish. See gobbledygook.

Etymology:

From the 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)



• "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, "The 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."
  (William Lutz, "Jargon," The Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1992)



• "Lawyers in England and Wales have been told to stop using jargon and keep their language simple when dealing with clients. . . . The organization, which represents 85,000 solicitors, said lawyers who used terms like 'codicil,''actus reus,' and 'forbearance' when dealing with clients should use plain English instead."
  (BBC News, 13 March 2003)

Pronunciation: JAR-gun