The original jabberwocky was/is a poem written by Lewis Carroll in his novel, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There; think Alice in Wonderland to which it is a sequel. As the first two lines illustrate –
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
The words sound as if they should make sense. In the book, different characters try to come up with definitions for the words, but of course the intentional linguistic ambiguity forces each character to supply meaning out of their own experiences.
Like the characters, we, as humans, don’t like to admit that we don’t really understand something that we think we should, and thus fall prey to all sorts of manipulation and thorough obfuscation. Think Goebels and the ‘Big Lie’, or think of all the promises of youth, fitness, and beauty which are based on unfamiliar and essentially meaningless words (they usually employ Latin or Greek derivatives and sound very scientific), which entice us to spend billions each year on basically useless products. That’s very profitable jabberwocky if you ask me.