babeldom

plural babeldoms

1. alternativecountableuncountableAlternative form of Babeldom.

   To a babeldom of worry, the bus slowed down until it finally came to a stop.

   2010, Morgan Benson, The Mating Rituals of the Burning Giraffe, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   Written by and for a myopic, microscopical insomniac, it's a babeldom that puts all noveldom in the shade, that puts culture, with a sardonic laugh, in a cul-de-sac.

   2004, Kenneth White, The wanderer and his charts, →ISBN, page 177

   To do this, it was necessary to exile myself from doctors and medical conventions; for I could not think for myself while listening to the babblings of babeldom.

   2007, John H. Tilden, Toxemia Explained, →ISBN, page 18

   In a tall huge wagon, with only its breadth to count for one's idea of elegance, beauty, or comfort, covered over half its length by a gray tarpaulin and, against the country's custom, with four horses harnessed side by side, horses as stout as a fellow could knock down with a fist not uncommonly hard, some ten, twenty, thirty, or forty individuals of all ages and all sexes huddle together at a time at the back, in front, on the driver's seat, on the side ladders, sitting up, lying down, crouching, standing, all reeking of garlic and of onion, all spitting, waving hands, talking all at once in a savage vernacular, patched out of every idiom, although German prevails; they are scruffy, unbuttoned and tattered, praying in a hurried babeldom and beating their breasts with their fists in token of humility or grief.

   2009, Andrei Oisteanu, Inventing the Jew, →ISBN

plural Babeldoms · alternative babeldom · alternative babbledom · alternative Babbledom

1. countableuncountableA confused mix of voices, languages, or words and ideas.

   While we welcome the growth of a meaningful dialect of English, we fear an unregulated growth of Ceylonisms may create a Babeldom in the linguistic international arena.

   2003, S. Pathiravitana, Through my Asian eyes, →ISBN, page 41

   4 more examples

   Only a German hobbledehoy was coarse with me, and cursed at my aping foreign Babeldoms, and thundered out in his beery bass, " At a Tscherman mummery must the Tschennan Tscherman speak."

   1880, William Stigand, The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine, page 107

   Notwithstanding all the shams which, to use Mr. Carlyle's phrases, have been exploded, all the Babeldoms which have been talked out, all the mockeries, delusions, and snares which have been exposed, it yet remains that marriage is the be-all and end-all of the British maiden's existence.

   1881, E.H. Yates, “The Forlorn Hope”, in Library of Famous Fiction, page 102

   But it is not all of the curse of Babeldom in the passage — unless we are to suppose that, in the two sentences following that on which I have been commenting, we have only a statement of the truism that the appearance of the country and our customs have improved with civilization, -- which would be irrelevant to the though preceding.

   1887, W. Proudfoot Begg, The Development of Taste, and Other Studies in Aesthetics, page 215

   If phenolphthalein names were fanciful in 1910, the date of this protest, they were utter folly by the 1920s, a "Babeldom" in the opinion of purgative expert Bernard Fantus.

   1993, Pharmacy in History - Volume 35, page 9

2. countableuncountableA state of noisy confusion and chaotic activity

   Babeldom drowned out any elaboration of the invitation, which was for the best.

   2014, Joan Hess, Deader Homes and Gardens, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   HPSCHD is, literally, describable — six harpsichords, movie and still projections of lunar and terrestrial landscapes (courtesy of NASA), a vertiginous polyglot of quaquaversal dispersion, a Babeldom of visual and aural stimuli — but, like nearly all of Cage's work, its impact lies totally in the experiential effect of being there.

   1975, Music Journal - Volume 33, page 53

   For the less well educated audience, another interpretation "programmed" by Pushkin was possible - the perception of a clash of forces as a spectacle of Babeldom.

   2006, Chester S. L. Dunning, Caryl Emerson, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, The uncensored Boris Godunov, →ISBN, page 494

   As Skoda was at the same time supplying both Bulgaria and her opponents, while Schneider and Vickers-Zaharoff were simultaneously engaged in a bitter struggle for the entire Balkan region, the confusion amongst the various interests grew to Babeldom.

   2013, Bernhard Menne, Blood And Steel - The Rise Of The House Of Krupp, →ISBN

3. countableuncountableA multiplicity of mutually unintelligible languages.

   Rotary has proved that the language of friendship is readily understood regardless of the Babeldom of tongues.

   1930 February, Everett W. Hills, “Language of Friendship”, in The Rotarian, volume 36, number 2, page 19

   2 more examples

   In connection with both are night-schools for adults, which are also largely attended by Arabs, Copts, Jews, Levantines, and Europeans of almost every nationality: the waifs-and-strays of Babeldom who have no time for school-work by day, but who take industriously to it six evenings a week under the attractions here offered.

   1877, James Carlile McCoan, Egypt as it is, page 221

   In the midst of the Babeldom of the nations, on the day of Pentecost, the one pure and mighty human language was revealed which one day all will speak, and all the brethren and sisters from all nations and tongues will understand.

   2007, Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, →ISBN, page 138