rigmarole

[rig-muh-rohl] /ˈrɪg məˌroʊl/
noun
1.
an elaborate or complicated procedure:
to go through the rigmarole of a formal dinner.
2.
confused, incoherent, foolish, or meaningless talk.
Also, rigamarole.
Origin
1730-40; alteration of ragman roll
Examples from the web for rigmarole
  • The beauty of this match was its intensity without rigmarole or ritual.
  • Take the rigmarole it puts users through when they wish to close an account.
  • Then there was all the rigmarole involving street names and zip codes.
  • Take oil pricing, a complex statist rigmarole that had been moving from the hands of government to those of a regulator.
  • The government's plan to perpetuate itself in office, via the traditional electoral rigmarole, is likely to go ahead.
  • If one has a connecting flight, you still have to through the customs rigmarole.
  • Some darn good people left because they didn't want to go through this whole rigmarole.
British Dictionary definitions for rigmarole

rigmarole

/ˈrɪɡməˌrəʊl/
noun
1.
any long complicated procedure
2.
a set of incoherent or pointless statements; garbled nonsense
Word Origin
C18: from earlier ragman roll a list, probably a roll used in a medieval game, wherein various characters were described in verse, beginning with Ragemon le bon Ragman the good
Word Origin and History for rigmarole
n.

1736, "a long, rambling discourse," apparently from an altered, Kentish colloquial survival of ragman roll "long list or catalogue" (1520s), in Middle English a long roll of verses descriptive of personal characters, used in a medieval game of chance called Rageman, perhaps from Anglo-French Ragemon le bon "Ragemon the good," which was the heading on one set of the verses, referring to a character by that name. Sense transferred to "foolish activity or commotion" by 1939.