[Ads-l] GIBBERISH -- antedating and note.

[Jonathan Lighter]

> ye speake good gibbryshe.

He should of stuck around.

JL

On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 4:52 AM, Robin Hamilton <
robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:

> The OED defines GIBBERISH as, "Unintelligible speech belonging to no known
> language, and supposed to be of arbitrary invention; inarticulate chatter,
> jargon. Often applied contemptuously to blundering or ungrammatical
> language, to obscure and pretentious verbiage, etc.," and provides a first
> citation from the interlude, _Youth_, for which it gives a publication date
> of c. 1557.
>
> This can be antedated from John Palsgrave, _Lesclarcissement de la Langue
> Francoyse_ (1530), where we find (The table of Verbes, fol. 368):
>
>     “I Speke a pedlars frenche or a gyberishe or any contrefait language /
> Ie iargonne. prime coniu. They speke a pedlars frenche amongest them selfe:
> Ilz iargonne[n]|t entre eulx.”
>
> Palsgrave not only provides an antedating to the OED citation, but points
> to the close association, in its origin, of the term "gibberish" with not
> simply unintelligible language but with argot.
>
> In the (mostly bilingual) dictionaries up till at least 1700, "gibberish"
> is almost invariably associated with national varieties of argot, and this
> should be more fully stressed in the definition, and perhaps given as a
> separate initial entry.
>
> This persists as late as Samuel Johnson's _Dictionary_ of 1755, where
> "gibberish" is defined as: "Cant; the private language of rogues and
> gipsies; words without meaning."
>
> The association of "gibberish" with argot can be found in the following
> dictionaries:
>
>     Claude Hollyband, A Dictionary French and English (1593)
>     John Florio, A World of Words (1598)
>     Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionary of the French and English Tongues
> (1611)
>     John Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words (1611)
>     Thomas Blount, Glossographia or a Dictionary (1656)
>     Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words    (1658)
>     John Wilkins, An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical
> Language (1668)
>     Elisha Coles, An English Dictionary (1676 )
>     Guy Miège, A New Dictionary French and English (1677)
>
> As one last point, while _Youth_ was, as the OED notes, published around
> 1557, the text  itself dates from c. 1510.  It is possible that in 1530,
> Palsgrave was drawing on an already-present meaning of "gibberish" as used
> to refer to clerical Latin, as found in _Youth_, where the text reads:
> "What me thynke ye be clerkyshe / For ye speake good gibbryshe."
>
> Robin Hamilton
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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