variants also rigamarole
as in gobbledegook
language marked by abstractions, jargon, euphemisms, and circumlocutions the security guard gave me some kind of rigmarole about passes and authorizations

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of rigmarole The bust was followed by months of prolonged legal rigmarole. John Semley, Rolling Stone, 19 Apr. 2025 Editors’ Picks Our Favorite Bathrooms Kermit has been through the graduation rigmarole before. Callie Holtermann, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025 But not as weird as the rigmarole of the music industry. Justin Curto, Vulture, 26 Mar. 2025 Is there a company that prides itself on an absence of rigmarole? Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 22 July 2024 See All Example Sentences for rigmarole
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rigmarole
Noun
  • Meaningless gobbledygook to an outsider, yet powerful to those who know how to wield those sounds properly.
    Noel Murray, Vulture, 17 Oct. 2025
  • 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
Noun
  • Worthington said the rhetoric by Republicans in Pennsylvania is helpful, but limited in its effectiveness.
    Will McDuffie, ABC News, 3 Nov. 2025
  • The Iraq War exposed just how hollow our rhetoric of freedom and democracy was.
    Shadi Hamid, Time, 3 Nov. 2025
Noun
  • Vril and Agartha have thrived in part because of the way the editors mix brainrot and bigotry, disguising their ideological assaults in the fried fog of GifTok rap gibberish.
    Kieran Press-Reynolds, Pitchfork, 24 Oct. 2025
  • The strategy always involves the same ingredients: The message, called the plaintext, gets distorted (the encryption) so that anybody who intercepts it sees only garbled gibberish (the ciphertext).
    Jack Murtagh, Scientific American, 22 Oct. 2025
Noun
  • By the next morning, the hype had spilled into the markets.
    Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 31 Oct. 2025
  • Sure, the product trades on hype, is highly volatile and has limited real-world applications.
    Allison Morrow, CNN Money, 30 Oct. 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
  • The story's become one of most iconic tales of the 20th century, one filled to the brim with glorious weirdness, corruption, blood, lust and plenty of song and dance.
    Audrey Gibbs, Nashville Tennessean, 23 Oct. 2025
  • Peaceful protesting with song and dance Despite the many criticisms that anti-Trump protesters came to preach, there were displays of optimism, hope and whimsy in several cities.
    Emma Bowman, NPR, 19 Oct. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Rigmarole.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rigmarole. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.

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