Southern Style Cooking: Word of the Day: Amphigory

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

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noun

1. A nonsense verse; a rigmarole, which is meaningless despite possibly appearing to have meaning.

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"Lewis Carroll's poem 'Jabberwocky' is an amphigory that sounds like regular English, until one examines its nonsense words in detail."

"I was struggling to understand my poetry assignment, until a classmate revealed it was an amphigory and couldn't be understood at face value."

"The poem was an amphigory, but I still spent an hour trying to make sense of it."

French, late 18th century

This literary device is essentially a bit of gobbledygook. A well-known amphigory is found in the closing credits of the 1980s sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati." Musician Jim Ellis wrote music for a song to play over the end credits but didn't yet have words prepared, so in an early demo he sang gibberish over the hard-rock backing track and was surprised to discover it sounded effective. ...