Not Long enough you say? Alrighty then.
Gibberish is a generic term in English for talking that sounds like speech, but carries no actual meaning. This meaning has also been extended to meaningless text or gobbledygook. The common theme in gibberish statements is a lack of literal sense, which can be described as a presence of nonsense. Gibberish should not be confused with literary nonsense such as that used in the poem "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll.
The term was first seen in English in the early 16th century.[1]
One etymology asserts it is derived from the root of the Irish word gob or gab (mouth), which the same source asserts is the root of jabber, gibber and gobble.[2] The word may derive from the word "jabber" ("to talk nonsense"), with the "-ish" suffix to signify a language.
Another etymology links it directly to the Irish term Geab ar ais (pron. g'ab er'ash), gab ar ais (pron. gab er'ash), back talk, backward chat; fig. back-slanged speech. Gab (gaelic), n., to chat or talk a lot. Geab (pron. g'ab) n., chat. (Donegal.) Geabaire, n., a chatterer or blabberer. Ar ais (pron. er ash), back; backwards.[3] However, this Irish etymology was suggested by Daniel Cassidy, whose work has been widely criticised by reputable linguists and scholars. The terms geab and geabaire are certainly Irish words, but the phrase geab ar ais does not exist, and the word gibberish exists as a loan-word in Irish as gibiris, defined by Ó Dónaill as "Gibberish. Gibiris chainte - unintelligible speech". (Ó Dónaill, Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, 630). Thus like many of Cassidy's derivations, this proposed explanation appears quite improbable.
Another theory is that the word comes from the name of the famous 8th-century Islamic alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, whose name was Latinized as "Geber", thus the term