Babeldom

See also: babeldom

English

Alternative forms

• babeldom, babbledom, Babbledom

Etymology

From a conflation of babble +‎ -dom and Babel +‎ -dom.

Noun

Babeldom (countable and uncountable, plural Babeldoms)

1. A confused mix of voices, languages, or words and ideas.
   • 1880, William Stigand, The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine, page 107:

     Only a German hobbledehoy was coarse with me, and cursed at my aping foreign Babeldoms, and thundered out in his beery bass, " At a Tscherman mummery must the Tschennan Tscherman speak."

   • 1881, E.H. Yates, “The Forlorn Hope”, in Library of Famous Fiction, page 102:

     Notwithstanding all the shams which, to use Mr. Carlyle's phrases, have been exploded, all the Babeldoms which have been talked out, all the mockeries, delusions, and snares which have been exposed, it yet remains that marriage is the be-all and end-all of the British maiden's existence.

   • 1887, W. Proudfoot Begg, The Development of Taste, and Other Studies in Aesthetics, page 215:

     But it is not all of the curse of Babeldom in the passage — unless we are to suppose that, in the two sentences following that on which I have been commenting, we have only a statement of the truism that the appearance of the country and our customs have improved with civilization, -- which would be irrelevant to the though preceding.

   • 1993, Pharmacy in History - Volume 35, page 9:

     If phenolphthalein names were fanciful in 1910, the date of this protest, they were utter folly by the 1920s, a "Babeldom" in the opinion of purgative expert Bernard Fantus.

   • 2003, S. Pathiravitana, Through my Asian eyes, →ISBN, page 41:

     While we welcome the growth of a meaningful dialect of English, we fear an unregulated growth of Ceylonisms may create a Babeldom in the linguistic international arena.

2. A state of noisy confusion and chaotic activity
   • 1975, Music Journal - Volume 33, page 53:

     HPSCHD is, literally, describable — six harpsichords, movie and still projections of lunar and terrestrial landscapes (courtesy of NASA), a vertiginous polyglot of quaquaversal dispersion, a Babeldom of visual and aural stimuli — but, like nearly all of Cage's work, its impact lies totally in the experiential effect of being there.

   • 2006, Chester S. L. Dunning, Caryl Emerson, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, The uncensored Boris Godunov, →ISBN, page 494:

     For the less well educated audience, another interpretation "programmed" by Pushkin was possible - the perception of a clash of forces as a spectacle of Babeldom.

   • 2013, Bernhard Menne, Blood And Steel - The Rise Of The House Of Krupp, →ISBN:

     As Skoda was at the same time supplying both Bulgaria and her opponents, while Schneider and Vickers-Zaharoff were simultaneously engaged in a bitter struggle for the entire Balkan region, the confusion amongst the various interests grew to Babeldom.

   • 2014, Joan Hess, Deader Homes and Gardens, →ISBN:

     Babeldom drowned out any elaboration of the invitation, which was for the best.

3. A multiplicity of mutually unintelligible languages.
   • 1877, James Carlile McCoan, Egypt as it is, page 221:

     In connection with both are night-schools for adults, which are also largely attended by Arabs, Copts, Jews, Levantines, and Europeans of almost every nationality: the waifs-and-strays of Babeldom who have no time for school-work by day, but who take industriously to it six evenings a week under the attractions here offered.

   • 1930 February, Everett W. Hills, “Language of Friendship”, in The Rotarian, volume 36, number 2, page 19:

     Rotary has proved that the language of friendship is readily understood regardless of the Babeldom of tongues.

   • 2007, Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, →ISBN, page 138:

     In the midst of the Babeldom of the nations, on the day of Pentecost, the one pure and mighty human language was revealed which one day all will speak, and all the brethren and sisters from all nations and tongues will understand.