as in legalese
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Recent Examples of psychobabble
The overly earnest character speaks in a hilariously cringey Gen Z self-help psychobabble that continuously grates on Enrique’s nerves.
—
Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 May 2025
Sometimes, such content might be portrayed as being valid psychological science versus non-sensical psychobabble.
—Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 11 Apr. 2025
This is the modernist quest reduced to Silicon Valley psychobabble.
—Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 27 Oct. 2022
The show is savvy enough to sense how easily human ache can fall prey to the manipulative language of certain practitioners, and how alluring psychobabble can be, in the right context.
—Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 19 Aug. 2021
To the uninitiated, this might read like so much innocuous psychobabble.
—Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8 Nov. 2020
The fetishistic horse business is merely a weird aesthetic choice that's explained away with a bit of perfunctory psychobabble.
—Katie Walsh, latimes.com, 2 May 2018
Even taking the Super Bowl hangover psychobabble into account, this looks more like a mechanical problem than a mental one — for now.
—Dan Wolken, USA TODAY, 19 Oct. 2017
Such speculation makes psychobiography sound like little more than psychobabble.
—Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 2 June 2017
Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 May 2025
Sometimes, such content might be portrayed as being valid psychological science versus non-sensical psychobabble.
—Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 11 Apr. 2025
This is the modernist quest reduced to Silicon Valley psychobabble.
—Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 27 Oct. 2022
The show is savvy enough to sense how easily human ache can fall prey to the manipulative language of certain practitioners, and how alluring psychobabble can be, in the right context.
—Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 19 Aug. 2021
To the uninitiated, this might read like so much innocuous psychobabble.
—Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8 Nov. 2020
The fetishistic horse business is merely a weird aesthetic choice that's explained away with a bit of perfunctory psychobabble.
—Katie Walsh, latimes.com, 2 May 2018
Even taking the Super Bowl hangover psychobabble into account, this looks more like a mechanical problem than a mental one — for now.
—Dan Wolken, USA TODAY, 19 Oct. 2017
Such speculation makes psychobiography sound like little more than psychobabble.
—Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 2 June 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for psychobabble
Noun
-
Instead, consumers must search about 7,000 words into a privacy policy filled with legalese to find a link to the page.—
CalMatters,
Mercury News,
13 Aug. 2025
-
Trump’s executive order, then, enters this conversation not as a reform tool but as a political news release dressed in legalese.—
Mike Bianchi,
The Orlando Sentinel,
5 Aug. 2025
Noun
-
Details of new initiatives were bogged down by mind-numbing bureaucratese.—
Sharon Grigsby,
Dallas News,
11 Apr. 2023
-
The most striking aspect of Putin’s failure to accept responsibility for the Kursk disaster was his retreat into bureaucratese.—
Masha Gessen,
The New Yorker,
18 Mar. 2020
Noun
-
Bob Kring DeBary Congressional bill is full of greed The Great Big Beautiful Bill reads like 950 pages of of gobbledygook distilled into four words: Greedy, stingy, mean and short-sighted.—
Letters to the Editor,
The Orlando Sentinel,
2 July 2025
-
The six-episode limited series feels like a long movie broken into arbitrary episodes, its ending is mired by digital gobbledygook, and Marvel still doesn’t know how magic makes sense in a universe ruled by advanced technology and literal gods.—
Ben Travers,
IndieWire,
24 June 2025
Noun
-
Some individuals’ self-destructive dependence on AI to make sense of the world through religious prophecy, sci-fi technobabble, conspiracy theories, or all of the above has led to family rifts, divorces, and gradual alienation from society itself.—
Miles Klee,
Rolling Stone,
22 June 2025
-
Tom’s latest vehicle for death-defying stunts and — at this point — incoherent technobabble pits him against the AI from Dead Reckoning again.—
Eric Vilas-Boas,
Vulture,
23 May 2025
Noun
-
Her toddler, who was almost two, leaned over the railing and called out to the agents in baby gibberish, but the agents did not acknowledge her.—
Jordan Salama,
New Yorker,
25 July 2025
-
That's largely thanks to a winning voice-acting performance that forms the basis for some toe-tapping gibberish playing behind DK's Bananza transformations.—
ArsTechnica,
ArsTechnica,
16 July 2025
Noun
-
Driving the news: The statement was published only in English on the Facebook page of the Israeli Prime Minister's Office — potentially another case of double-talk by Netanyahu.—
Barak Ravid,
Axios,
27 Sep. 2024
-
The GOP Senate candidate in Arizona, whose brand is a combative, never-back-down MAGA politics, has adopted a position on the issue that is nearly indistinguishable from that of double-talking Democrats.—
Rich Lowry,
National Review,
14 Apr. 2024
Noun
-
Rather than directly discounting the TV by £200, Samsung is likely hoping that some people will be put off by the rigmarole of going through the claims process.—
Janhoi McGregor,
Forbes.com,
26 May 2025
-
The bust was followed by months of prolonged legal rigmarole.—
John Semley,
Rolling Stone,
19 Apr. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Psychobabble.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/psychobabble. Accessed 19 Aug. 2025.
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