• Phoeniqz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    According to wikipedia:

    The term gobbledygook was coined by Maury Maverick, a former congressman from Texas and former mayor of San Antonio.[19] When Maverick was chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II, he sent a memorandum that said: “Be short and use plain English. … Stay off gobbledygook language.”[20][21] Maverick defined gobbledygook as “talk or writing which is long, pompous, vague, involved, usually with Latinized words.” The allusion was to a turkey, “always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity.”

    Please do a better research next time before writing an reply about some other word and making up causations where there are just correlations. Just because a word contains “gook” does not mean it’s related to the word “gook”

    • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      I actually remain unconvinced by the non-scholarly sources people are providing, authoritatively claiming etymology on scant evidence, and believe they are relying on the self-reported motives of Maverick.

      ‘Gook’ is only generally used as a slur, and other uses are obsolete by a century or extremely regional and rare. In 1944 the slur was the predominant usage, particularly around Maverick.

      Do you have a more authoritative source?