Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To speak rapidly or incoherently; jabber.
- intransitive verb To make rapid, low muttering or quacking sounds, as a goose or duck.
- intransitive verb To utter rapidly or incoherently.
- noun Rapid, incoherent, or meaningless speech.
- noun The low muttering sound of a goose or duck.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To talk noisily and rapidly; speak incoherently or without sense; prate; jabber.
- To utter inarticulate sounds in rapid succession, like a goose when feeding.
- To utter noisily, rapidly, and incoherently: as, to
gabble a lesson. - To affect in some way by gabbling.
- noun Loud or rapid talk without sense or coherence.
- noun Inarticulate chattering, as of fowl.
- noun Synonyms See
prattle , n.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To talk fast, or to talk without meaning; to prate; to jabber.
- intransitive verb To utter inarticulate sounds with rapidity; -- used of fowls as well as people.
- noun Loud or rapid talk without meaning.
- noun Inarticulate sounds rapidly uttered; as of fowls.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To talk
fast ,idly ,foolishly , or without meaning.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun rapid and indistinct speech
- verb speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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How that old lady did smile and (as she herself laughingly said) "gabble" her delight!
Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands Alice B. Emerson
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"When I 'read the minutes' I just reach back in my mind and recall what the gabble was the night before -- I've got an awfully good memory.
Tunnel In The Sky Heinlein, Robert A. 1955
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'gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like
The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) James Mill Leslie Stephen 1868
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“It was a fine summer’s night, and there was not wind enough to fill a sky-sail, and on I went the back-way to the place where we used to meet in the summer-house: but as I was nearing it, I thought I heard two voices: I hove to, and listened. it was a mongrel kind of gabble, between
Three Weeks in the Downs, or Conjugal Fidelity Rewarded: exemplified in the Narrative of Helen and Edmund Anonymous 1829
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She began to imagine a war of words, to see the Polish words and the English words coming at each other, stalking forward, not sentences, just words, gabble gabble gabble, flung out high and shrill and stalking forward and then grappling with each other.
Touched by Evil Joseph O'Neil 2009
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I thought perhaps she had cast some strange glamour upon you to make you gabble so stupidly.
GuildWars Edge of Destiny J. Robert King 2011
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I thought perhaps she had cast some strange glamour upon you to make you gabble so stupidly.
GuildWars Edge of Destiny J. Robert King 2011
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Raúl Esparza, cast as a fey mathematician who tries to explain chaos theory to Hannah, makes the mistake of reducing his big speech to unintelligible gabble, while Mr. Crudup is too genial to be convincing as a waspishly malicious academic.
When Good Enough Just Isn't Enough Terry Teachout 2011
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Gabble, gabble, gabble, gabble, quack, quack, quack and cock a doodle do — Will you scold Betsy Howyes for me?
Letter 331 2009
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During the trial in the Federal courthouse in DC, the TV trucks had permanent positions on the street, and marked spots for their stand-ups to gabble into their microphones.
ruzuzu commented on the word gabble
"To utter inarticulate sounds in rapid succession, like a goose when feeding."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
July 22, 2015