rigmarole

plural rigmaroles · alternative rigamarole

1. countableuncountableA long and complicated formal procedure.

   Have you seen all the rigmarole you have to go through at airport security these days?

   1 more example

   “Happy Father's Day! Birdhouse is coming along great. 'Course, the city inspector's riding me about zoning laws, and my electrician's putting me through the whole rigmarole.” “Steve, you've made peace with never being with a woman, right?” “Uh, yeah.”

   2016 November 7, Jordan Blum & Parker Deay, “Father's Daze” (3:52 from the start), in American Dad!, season 14, episode 1, spoken by Steve Smith (Scott Grimes)

   Synonyms: carry-on, circus act, palaver, riddle me ree

2. countabledateduncountableConfused and incoherent talk; nonsense.

   If you are alluding to Dostoevski’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Karamazov Brothers and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigmarole.

   5 more examples

   Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.

   1847, Thomas De Quincey, “Secret Societies”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine

   While you are planting the seed, he cries -- "Drop it, drop it -- cover it up, cover it up -- pull it up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster.

   1854, Henry David Thoreau, chapter VII, in Walden

   His reply did not even allude to the subject, but was a rigmarole about the weather; as if he had been writing to an idiot, who did not require a rational answer to any question they had asked.

   1880, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, A Blighted Life, sxn 4

   "Stuff and nonsense, and lying rigmaroles!" he growled, as I vanished through the door[.]

   1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 250

   In comes Mitaiele to Lloyd, and told some rigmarole about Paatalise (the steward's name) wanting to go and see his family in the bush.

   1895, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter XIX, in The Valima Letters

   Synonyms: babble, blather, gibberish, migmarole, absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, apple grease

alternative rigamarole

1. Characterized by rigmarole; prolix; tedious.

   This is a most rigmarole letter, for after each sentence, I take breath[…]

   1838 September 14, Charles Darwin, To Charles Lyell; republished as “Letter no. 428”, in Darwin Correspondence Project, University of Cambridge, 2023, retrieved 23 May 2024

   1 more example

   "This officer has ended at last," said the Prime Minister. "Another story of calamity, and told in a very rigmarole way, I must confess; but he never can shorten his reports by only inserting the weighty matter. 'Reports annexed,' indeed!—yes, six of them; and underneath sixteen other reports—all, no doubt, much in the same strain."

   1886, “The Nation's Progress”, in Albion and Ierne, London: Marcus Ward & Company, page 133

   Synonyms: long-winded, palaverous, circumlocutory, diffuse, periphrastic, palaverous, pleonastic, prolix