英语词汇mumbo jumbo的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

mumbo jumbo. Mama Dyumbo was really more a male chauvinist god than anything else. The English explorer Mungo Park writes in his Travels in the Interior of Africa that Mama Dyumbo was the spirit protecting the villages of the Khassonke, a Mandingo African tribe on the Senegal. His name literally means “ancestor with a pompon,” or wearing a tuft on his hat. Mama Dyumbo was mostly a ploy used by crafty husbands to silence their noisy wives. He was called upon when a man thought one of his wives talked too much, causing dissension in his house. The husband or a confederate disguised himself as Mama Dyumbo and seized the troublemaker, frightening her with his mask, tufted headdress, and the hideous noises he made. He’d then tie the offender to a tree and “whip her silent” amid the jeers of onlookers. (The custom recalls the ducking stool procedure employed in America.) Mungo Park dubbed the bogey employed in this ritual “Mandingo,” but he became known as Mumbo Jumbo, a corruption of Mama Dyumbo. Be- cause the god bewildered offending women, mumbo jumbo came to mean confusing talk, nonsense, and meaningless cere- mony, or even technical jargon that could just as well be put into plain English.

词汇	mumbo jumbo
词源	mumbo jumbo. Mama Dyumbo was really more a male chauvinist god than anything else. The English explorer Mungo Park writes in his Travels in the Interior of Africa that Mama Dyumbo was the spirit protecting the villages of the Khassonke, a Mandingo African tribe on the Senegal. His name literally means “ancestor with a pompon,” or wearing a tuft on his hat. Mama Dyumbo was mostly a ploy used by crafty husbands to silence their noisy wives. He was called upon when a man thought one of his wives talked too much, causing dissension in his house. The husband or a confederate disguised himself as Mama Dyumbo and seized the troublemaker, frightening her with his mask, tufted headdress, and the hideous noises he made. He’d then tie the offender to a tree and “whip her silent” amid the jeers of onlookers. (The custom recalls the ducking stool procedure employed in America.) Mungo Park dubbed the bogey employed in this ritual “Mandingo,” but he became known as Mumbo Jumbo, a corruption of Mama Dyumbo. Be- cause the god bewildered offending women, mumbo jumbo came to mean confusing talk, nonsense, and meaningless cere- mony, or even technical jargon that could just as well be put into plain English.
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