mumbo jumbo

plural mumbo jumbos · alternative mumbo-jumbo

1. countablehistoricaluncountableA deity or other supernatural being said to have been worshipped by certain West African peoples; an idol.

   So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawpaw be utterly abolished.

   1831, Thomas Carlyle, “Symbols”, in Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. […], London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, 3rd book, page 155

2. countableuncountablelifestyleAny object of superstition; religious words and/or actions which are seen as superstitious or fraudulent.

   Rev. Quack's healing services are little more than mumbo jumbo.

   3 more examples

   Vera was made to dip her hand into the bird's blood and then make a handprint on a sheet of paper while the witches all chanted some mumbo-jumbo.

   1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 58

   "And what have you got to say? Another lot of mumbo-jumbo like your learned associates over there?"

   1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 91

   What is going on in all this religious mumbo-jumbo that is so foreign to the positivism of contemporary scholarship is a reenactment of the history of the soul before the beginning of terrestrial evolution.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 179

3. broadlycountableuncountableAny confusing or meaningless speech; nonsense, gibberish.

   Football lingo is mumbo jumbo to me.

   3 more examples

   He escaped from that experience confounded, horrified, and conscious of degradation. Those infernal bandogs of the law had treated him as a piece of insensate property to their drivelling mumbo-jumbo, as if mere contact with it had robbed him of all rights to the dignity and integrity of his own ego.

   1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 89

   When it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, / Reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more / Than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:

   1985, Robert Hayden, “Frederick Douglass”, in Collected Poems

   He also said Britain would be “governed by science, not mumbo-jumbo” when looking at whether imported food was acceptable for consumption in the UK.

   2020 February 3, Rowena Mason, “Boris Johnson hints at allowing GM food imports from US”, in The Guardian

   Synonyms: absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, apple grease, applesauce, bafflegab, balderdash, balls