A rigmarole is a long fussy procedure that seems pointless. The whole rigmarole, go through the rigmarole, a bureaucratic rigmarole.
It is always a complaint and always about steps rather than difficulty. The word comes from ragman roll, a medieval list of names so long that it became a byword for anything tediously drawn out.
1nounrigmaroleA long fussy procedure that seems pointless.
“Getting a new passport involved a lot of rigmarole with forms, photos and queues.”
rigmarole is a procedure.
From ragman roll, a long medieval list of names.
Built from
From ragman roll (“long list; catalogue”). Recorded since c1736.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA