Also, yadda, yadda. And so on and so on. This term describes tedious or long-winded talk, and its origin is not definitely known. Possibly it imitates the sound of a person droning on and on. It was used by comedian Lenny Bruce in the 1960s but was only popularized from about 1990 on in Seinfeld, a television sitcom, and caught on very quickly. In one episode George and a girlfriend are speaking: “‘Are you close with your parents?’—‘Well, they gave birth to me and . . . yada yada yada.’” Jeffrey Deaver used it in The Vanished Man (2003): “. . . and she’s going on about this guy, yadda, yadda, yadda, and how interesting he is and she’s all excited ’cause she’s going to have coffee with him.” It is on its way to clichédom. An earlier usage with nearly the same meaning of empty talk is blah-blah-blah. It dates from the early 1900s. Harper’s magazine had it in July 1991: “You get the same blah blah blah if you visit colonial Williamsburg.”