Ho chun thought that while they were there, they had better try throwing the fortune sticks, as he knew it would please them, so he picked up a tall round box, full of bamboo sticks, and explained it to them.

Abandoning its original application, then, let us use babu English, or babuism, as a general term to mean discourse in which the speaker (or writer) throws around learned words he does not understand in order to create a favorable impression. Babuism probably has existed and will continue to exist in every culture in which there is a learned class of magicians, shamans, priests, teachers, and other professional verbalizers with big vocabularies.

A sense that the air, a sighting of muddy river, or that outcrop of rock so implacably bland in the light of midday, is undertowed by memory.

[…] accommodated a sluce to clense and sew the Pond, with a grate of wood to let out the wast, as in other stews and Vivaries.