White Noise (slang)
The term white noise, the 'sh' noise produced by a signal containing all audible frequencies of vibration, is sometimes used as slang (or a neologism) to describe a meaningless commotion or chatter that masks or obliterates underlying information.
The information itself may have characteristics that achieve this effect without the need to introducing a masking layer. A common example of this usage is a politician including more information than needed to mask a point he doesn't want noticed.
In music the term is used for music that is discordant with no melody; disagreeable, harsh or dissonant.
Read more about White Noise (slang): "White Noise" in The Media
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or noise:
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)
“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”
—Jean Arp (1887–1948)