abracadabrant

comparative more abracadabrant · superlative most abracadabrant

1. ludicrous, preposterous

   The more I see of moving pictures the less I am able to understand many abracadabrant things about them.

   1918, Theatre Magazine, page 254

   5 more examples

   Such was J. T. Maston. No wonder his colleagues had every confidence in him when he undertook to solve the wildest abracadabrant calculations that occurred to their audacious brains!

   1890 April 5, “Barbicane & Co.; or, The Purchase of the Pole”, in The Boy’s Own Paper, volume XII, number 586, translation of original by Jules Verne, chapter VI (A Telephonic Conversation), page 422, column 2

   It was also Gounod, who, at the performance of Manon, finished his praise of a morceau by this abracadabrant phrase, ‘I find it octogone!’

   1895 June 9, Philip Hale, “Music in Boston”, in Musical Courier. A Weekly Journal Devoted to Music and the Music Trades., volume XXX, number 25 (whole 797), Boston, Mass., published 12 June 1895 (New York, N.Y.), page 14, column 2

   As for the snobs at Bayreuth, they undergo “an abracadabrant initiation into the mysteries of the parsifalian chimæra”!

   1899 April 15, “Our Library Table”, in The Athenæum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama, number 3729, page 465, column 3

   Courteix displayed motifs for embroideries and lacework which ladies will welcome with enthusiasm, while Abel Landry showed an ensemble of work at once varied and homogeneous: a sofa, chairs, a desk, a tea-service, and a bonbonnière—a whole set of what we may call “woman’s furniture,” which, by its simplicity and its fine and elegant appearance, is quite refreshing after the abracadabrant experiments wherewith we are, alas! only too familiar.

   1904, The Studio, page 164, columns 1–2

   But although Abraham was largely illiterate, the biblical texts were familiar to him. After drawing up a salutation which read: “To M. le Cardinal, very honourable chevalier de la légion, our welcome Commissaire of the Empire, of the Port Royal of France, of the administration of the bagne, of the city of the Just, the faithful town of Brest”, he reeled off a whole rosary of quotations from scripture, just as abracadabrant as the sample just given, then gushed for a time about his sad fate, “the poor father of six poor little children”, before he got down to brass tacks.

   1960, Anthony Rippon, transl., Justice in Chains: From the Galleys to Devil’s Island, London: Robert Hale Limited, […], translation of original by Michel Bourdet-Pléville, page 125