cryptobabble

English

Etymology

From crypto- +‎ babble.

Noun

cryptobabble (uncountable)

1. Communication that is in code or encrypted, and therefor not comprehensible.
   • 1986, Kirkus Reviews, page 1467:

     Just knowing that he has heard cryptobabble is enough to bring teams of assassins to Switzerland to silence the November Man, who had sworn off spywork to please Rita Macklin, his live-in lover.

   • 1998, The North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regilation:

     Cryptobabble: How Encryption Export Disputes Are Shaping Free Speech for the New Millennium

   • 2016, Michael Byrnes, Bounty, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 348:

     The other day, this jackass cryptographer who sits next to me at work f-sound what looked like a p-p-password in an old Gmail message, mixed in with a bunch of cryptobabble.

   • 2017 June 6, FromTheRafters, “VeeCrypt Encryption Scheme - Cryptanalysis.”, in sci.crypt (Usenet):

     His mathbabble is as bad as his cryptobabble.

2. Technical jargon or pseudolanguage that seems incomprehensible.
   • 1984 December 24, Henry F. Beechhold, “Condor Jr.: This file manager proves you can be good without being complicated”, in InfoWorld, volume 6, number 52, page 41:

     If the abbreviations begin to look like typical database cryptobabble, you needn’t bother with them, if you don’t mind typing in full sentences, which do approximate the mother tongue rather closely.

   • 1991 October 30, Stephen Modena, “ask for help”, in bionet.biology.computational (Usenet):

     I've noticed that a certain biostatistician that I occasionally work with always talks in similar cryptobabble with me.

   • 1991 November 7, Michael Gribskov, “non-intersecting alignments”, in bionet.biology.computational (Usenet):

     Like most scientific specialties, the sequence alignment field uses a technical vocabulary that it greatly helps to learn. This does not make it cryptobabble.

   • 1995, Aaron Weiss, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Protecting Yourself on the Internet, Que, page 244:

     Now, this may look like meaningless cryptobabble, but it is in fact very funny to adolescent geeks.

   • 1997 April 9, Christopher Gray, “Browser Offsets in Netscape”, in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html (Usenet):

     The cryptobabble is four times as long as the message itself!

   • 1999, The Skeptical Inquirer, page 12:

     Permadi foresees victory for Megawati, framing his prediction in Nostradamus-like cryptobabble: “There will be disruptions and chaos before or after the elections,” he said in a Reuters interview.

   • 2000 March 7, GMCarter, “CD8 CTLs Can't Do It Alone”, in misc.health.aids (Usenet):

     What the heck is that cryptobabble supposed to mean?

   • 2001, Onearth, page 28:

     And if you want to hear “cryptobabble” – crusts talk all the time, she says—“you have to be very quiet and put your ear right next to the ground. You’ll hear this faint murmuring.”

   • 2001 August 23, John Baker, “To all lotus-eaters”, in ns.general (Usenet):

     More cryptobabble which means nothing.

   • 2002 April 4, Scott Contini, “Meganet's unbreakable Virtual Matrix Encryption (VME)”, in sci.crypt (Usenet):

     Yes it has already been determined to be official snake oil by sci.crypt. The same is true about heaps of other highly marketed systems supported by meaningless cryptobabble and challenges that hide the exact details of the algorithm being used.

   • 2008, George P. Robertson, War Against Islam, →ISBN, page 278:

     Using typical military cryptobabble the commanders had assured the pilots that this threat would be neutralised.

   • 2008 February 13, Ron's Inspector's Inspector, “Hermann Goering R.I.P”, in alt.religion.scientology (Usenet):

     What I make out of it is that you are posting some nonsense cryptobabble to make yourself seem more intelligent and mysterious.

   • 2008 November 9, Matthew Bell, “Thank heavens for royal families”, in The Independent, number 976, page 62:

     Much more fun was Jack Hunter, a new Indiana Jones-style action drama packed with sweat, guns and crypto[-]babble.

   • 2012 January 18, George Plimpton, “Re: WHO IS JESUS? ??????????”, in alt.agnosticism (Usenet):

     Your entire participation here is only an attempt at playing a pointless, endless, nonsensical Usenet game in which you try to suck in suckers by writing nothing but a lot of cryptobabble.

   • 2014, Martin K. Welge, Marc Eulerich, Corporate-Governance-Management, Springer Gabler, →ISBN, page 97:

     Today, most sophisticated financial practitioners privately admit that they have to re-read the forms before client meetings because of the complications underlying them.... It’s crypto[-]babble....

   • 2015, Peter Swirski, American Political Fictions: War on Errorism in Contemporary American Literature, Culture, and Politics, Palgrave Macmillan:

     See if you can recognize them in this hilarious cryptobabble from North American sophomores.

   • 2015, Mary Buckham, Invisible Journey Book 4: Alex Noziak, →ISBN:

     I threw my hands wide, fed up with all the crypto-babble.

   • 2017, Tal Ater, Building Progressive Web Apps: Bringing the Power of Native to the Browser, O’Reilly Media, page 202:

     You survived the cryptobabble section of the book.

See also

• technobabble