rigmarole
English
Alternative forms
* rigamarole
Noun
Complex, obsolete procedures; excess steps or activity; needless motion.
- Have you seen all the rigmarole you have to go through at airport security these days?
Nonsense; confused and incoherent talk.
- 1895' — ''In comes Mitaiele to Lloyd, and told some '''rigmarole about Paatalise (the steward's name) wanting to go and see his family in the bush.'' — , ch XIX
* De Quincey
- Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole .
Quotations
;confused and incoherent talk
* 1854 — (Henry David Thoreau), , ch VII
*: While you are planting the seed, he cries -- "Drop it, drop it -- cover it up, cover it up -- pull it up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole , his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster.
* 1880 — (Rosina Bulwer Lytton), , sxn 4
*: His reply did not even allude to the subject, but was a rigmarole about the weather; as if he had been writing to an idiot, who did not require a rational answer to any question they had asked.
* 1910 — , , ch XVII
* 1915 — (John Buchan), , ch 1
*: He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole .
Not English
has no English definition. It may be misspelled. 