Crossword clues for officialese
The Collaborative International Dictionary
officialese \officialese\ n. the formal and often obscure style of writing characteristic of some government officials; bureaucratese; -- it is characterized by euphemisms, circumlocutions, vague abstractions, and circumlocutions.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"language of officialdom," 1881, from official + -ese.
Wiktionary
n. The typical language of officials or official documents; legalistic and pompous language. (from 19th c.)
WordNet
n. the style of writing characteristic of some government officials: formal and obscure
Wikipedia
Officialese or bureaucratese is a derogatory term for language that sounds official. It is the "language of officialdom". Officialese is characterized by a preference for wordy, long sentences; a preference for complex words, code words or buzzwords over simple, traditional ones; a preference for vagueness over directness and a preference for passive over active voice (some of those elements may, however, vary between different times and languages). The history of officialese can be traced to the history of officialdom, as far back as the eldest human civilizations and their surviving official writings.
Officialese is meant to impress the listener (or reader) and increase the authority (more than the social status) of the user, making them appear more professional. Ernest Gowers noted that officialese also allows the user to remain vague. It can be used to make oneself understood to insiders while being hard to decipher by those unfamiliar with the jargon and subtexts used. Its use is known to put off members of the general public and reduce their interest in the material presented. Officialese has been criticized as making one's speech or prose "stilted, convoluted, and sometimes even indecipherable" and simply as the "cancer of language". It is thus more pejoratively classified as one of the types of gobbledygook. Its use can also result in unintended humorous incidents, and has been often satirized.
Several similar concepts to officialese exist, including genteelism, commercialese, academes and journalese. The existence of officialese has been recognized by a number of organizations, which have made attempts to curtail its use (see Plain Language Movement).
Usage examples of "officialese".
Wyfold thankfully showed no signs of regulating the flow into the careful officialese of a formal statement.
Ruiz had been, and the man who had succeeded Mackie at the Sagan dome, a young former resident named Kerry, did nothing but spout officialese and academic doubletalk.
ATC officialese which nowadays all flying people were supposed to hew to.
She scanned down the various bits of officialese until she spotted the two lines she was looking for.
The pity is that they seldom find a place in the officialese which he is condemned to read and occasionally to write.
The Starfleet officers knew already about the dangerously tight restrictions on shipboard navigational and defensive systems, but what with one thing and another involved in bringing the ship back from near-leave to fully operational status, none of those aboard Enterprise had been able to find the time to wade through reams of impenetrable officialese and learn what else was involved in General Order 12.
Since customs and other officialese would take a while yet, I hardly saw much reason to expend energy.
Carswell began his story with a lot of officialese like he was compiling a report, but soon got into the swing of it.
The officialese flowing now like a broad, uninterrupted stream, but not quite because of habit.
In point of fact, Rhys was fluent in both city and country French as well as Welsh, Cree, Aleut, and a few more languages, including the officialese in which he was expected to write his reports.
A marriage certificate, drawn up in officialese by Howard Goldstein, a Teller law student, was prepared for the Baxters and signed by Cowper, the couple themselves, and Rod and Caroline as witnesses.
Then the report had broken from its officialese to comment that the subject had a pronounced capacity to block incoming waves, and if other capacities were present, they could not at this time be fully defined.
His remunerative gleanings ranged from scraps of unconscious humour in the officialese of the district council minutes to whimsical remarks by old gentlemen arraigned in the local magistrates’.