Word-salad Word Salad (derived from the German Wortsalat) is characterized by confused, and often repetitious, language with no apparent meaning or relationship attached to them. It is often symptomatic of various mental illnesses, such as psychoses, including schizophrenia. Compare Derailment . Copyright Notice Adapted from Wikipedia. Text is available under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 ; additional terms may apply.