Jargon is the insider vocabulary of one profession, opaque to everyone else. Technical jargon, cut the jargon, full of jargon.
It is always named from outside: what one group calls jargon another calls precise terminology, and both are usually right. Real jargon does necessary work — it lets specialists say exact things quickly — and the fault is using it on people who do not share it. Note that the Old French word meant the chattering of birds, which is a fair description.
1nounjargonThe insider vocabulary of one profession.
“The doctor explained the results without any medical jargon, so we understood everything.”
jargon is specialist vocabulary.
The old French behind it is chatter. Jargon is chatter that only one trade can follow, and everyone else hears noise.
hooks ontochatter
Old French jargon meant the twittering of birds and then unintelligible talk. The sense of specialist vocabulary came much later.
Old French
jargon
Middle English
jargoun
English, today
jargon
Built from
From Middle English jargoun, jargon, from Old French jargon, a variant of gargon, gargun (“chatter; talk; language”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA