How to Use mumbo jumbo in a Sentence

mumbo jumbo

noun
  • We were confused by all the legal mumbo jumbo.
  • His explanation was just a lot of mumbo jumbo.
  • None of the steps along the way require readers to buy into sci-fi mumbo jumbo or to suspend disbelief.
    — Kristen Bellstrom, Fortune, 6 July 2018
  • No sugar cookies, no chocolate-chip mumbo jumbo, or your Nana’s special recipe.
    — Nr Editors, National Review, 19 Dec. 2019
  • Strong actors also can’t prop up a script built out of barely penetrable mumbo jumbo.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
  • The language the unemployed confront on the forms and notices often is in legal mumbo jumbo.
    — Rich Exner, cleveland, 18 May 2021
  • My son Gabe and his friend Jake are already tight, so that makes little sense — kind of like a lot of the mumbo jumbo espoused by the chain.
    — Anna Caplan, star-telegram, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Figuring out whether to buy a new iPhone always requires sorting through marketing mumbo jumbo.
    — Washington Post, 10 Sep. 2019
  • Figuring out whether to buy a new iPhone always requires sorting through marketing mumbo jumbo.
    — Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Denver Post, 15 Sep. 2019
  • What fascinated was her way of demystifying things and her cool patience in cutting through mumbo jumbo.
    — Troy Patterson, The New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2019
  • There’s no mumbo jumbo about the Force, no lightsabers, no First Order, and scarcely a mention of the Empire.
    — Christopher Orr, The Atlantic, 15 May 2018
  • Besides, at the 15 minute mark, Barbara gives us permission to stop caring about all the reversing time mumbo jumbo.
    — Shannon Carlin, refinery29.com, 16 Dec. 2020
  • The rub is that his world is dying because of some specific mumbo jumbo that leads Wade to seek out a Wolverine from a parallel universe to save it.
    — Nick Romano, EW.com, 5 Aug. 2024
  • But whatever all-for-one, the-strength-of-the-wolf-is-the-pack mumbo jumbo that has held the Pac-12 together for the past year now feels painfully trite.
    — Bill Oram, oregonlive, 27 July 2023
  • With its tongue way up its cheek, this zero-fat survival thriller is not bulked up with gratuitous sociological mumbo jumbo or layered with hidden meanings.
    — Duane Byrge, HollywoodReporter, 13 Nov. 2025
  • After being attacked by a lion on safari in Ghana, he’s given a mystical botanical serum mixed with lion’s blood and some mumbo jumbo about a tarot card.
    — Mark Kennedy, Boston Herald, 13 Dec. 2024
  • First there was this mumbo jumbo about official windows of time where teams had to make appointments to meet with free agents, even though most teams had already tampered and contacted prospective free agents and agreed to deals.
    — Gary Washburn, BostonGlobe.com, 30 June 2019
  • But even as Jeff Bezos was gushing about the amazeball-ness of his flirtation with space, the fact is that ultimately, all of that mumbo jumbo is secondary to him.
    — Steven Levy, Wired, 21 July 2021
  • No need for fancy policy talk or corporate regulatory mumbo jumbo.
    — Quartz Staff, Quartz, 28 Feb. 2023
  • The marketing around the film heavily emphasized its jukebox-hits soundtrack, and it was packed with more weird space mumbo jumbo than every Star Wars film before it.
    — John Gilpatrick, Popular Mechanics, 26 Dec. 2019
  • Trying to decode that spirit's mystical mumbo jumbo into actionable intelligence is a key part of your effort against the Dreamscourge.
    — Ars Technica, 13 Feb. 2025
  • This is the familiar mumbo jumbo that Hollywood loves to attach to surfing, to highlight the metaphysical connection that surfers have to the waves, the ocean, and maybe even the cosmos.
    — Frederick Dreier, Outside Online, 4 Mar. 2025
  • Expect more multiplier mumbo jumbo as the Biden administration begins its tax-and-spend fiesta.
    — Andy Kessler, WSJ, 6 Dec. 2020
  • There’s validity, too, to the argument that Sunday Service is nothing more than , a lot of mumbo jumbo signifying nothing.
    — Erik Maza, Town & Country, 4 Mar. 2020
  • As a result, even when Spanish vintners try to follow American-style labeling rules by naming their wines for grapes instead of towns or regions, those Spanish grape names still read like mumbo jumbo.
    — Gar Joseph & Marnie Old, Philly.com, 10 Jan. 2018
  • The techie in me had some serious questions about the dialogue involving The Entity’s source code; he was overruled by the part of me that loves when movie dialogue devolves into scientific mumbo jumbo.
    — Odie Henderson, BostonGlobe.com, 10 July 2023
  • John, however, a mechanical engineer working toward his doctorate in environmental engineering was just the guy to sort through the mechanical mumbo jumbo.
    — Marni Jameson, OrlandoSentinel.com, 6 July 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mumbo jumbo.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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