Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Last time on CTW we looked at the rhyming phrase -- or reduplication -- hocus pocus, meaning deceit and trickery. Today we'll examine a reduplicative cousin, mumbo jumbo, which refers to empty talk or jargon.

The strange history of mumbo jumbo begins with the English explorer Francis Moore, who published his memoir, Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa, in 1738.

Moore wrote of a spirit-god among the Mandingoes of western Africa whom the men summoned to frighten their wives into submission. Calling the spirit Mumbo Jumbo, probably an Anglicization of a Mandingo term, Moore writes: "At Night, I was visited by a Mumbo-Jumbo, an Idol, which is among the Mundingoes a kind of cunning Mystery...This is a Thing invented by the Men to keep their Wives in awe."

Travelers who later followed Moore's route into Africa also spoke of this strange idol Mumbo-Jumbo, the fearsome god of the Niger River.

The notion captured the European mind, and by the 1840s, the name suggested any object or idea inspiring senseless veneration. By the turn of the 20th century, the expression was a synonym for jargon or meaningless talk.

And of course, we've taken this ancient phrase into the digital age with complaints about the "technical mumbo jumbo" which can so often bedevil us.

Radio Script > Mumbo Jumbo