gabble

From gab +‎ -le. Cognate with Saterland Frisian gabbelje (“to mock”), Dutch gabbelen (“to chatter, babble”), German Low German gabbeln (“to mock”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡæbəl/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æbəl

gabble (third-person singular simple present gabbles, present participle gabbling, simple past and past participle gabbled)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To talk fast, idly, foolishly, or without meaning.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     I pitied thee, took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour one thing or other; when thou didst not, savage, know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like a thing most brutish

   • 1900, Mark Twain, chapter 4, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg:

     Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things which were not clearly understandable.

   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC:

     Americans are always drinking in crossroads saloons on Sunday afternoon; they bring their kids; they gabble and brawl over brews; everything’s fine.

   • 2013, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 16, in The Childhood of Jesus, Melbourne, Australia: The Text Publishing Company, page 144:

     Does she regard him simply as a workman come to do a job for her, someone whom she need never lay eyes on again; or is she gabbling to hide discomfiture?

2. To utter inarticulate sounds with rapidity.

   gabbling fowls

   • 1697, Virgil, “The Ninth Pastoral. Or, Lycidas, and Moeris.”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 43:

     I not to Cinna’s Ears, nor Varus dare aſpire; / But gabble like a Gooſe; amidſt the Svvan-like Quire.

• babble; See also Thesaurus:prattle

gabble (uncountable)

1. Confused or unintelligible speech.
   • 1914, G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown:

     a lot of gabble from witnesses

   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 26:

     [T]he driver was delayed there by a skimpy little woman with a thin piping voice practised in the art of defeating escape from it by a ceaseless stream of gabble.

• See also Thesaurus:chatter

• gibble-gabble

Cognate with English gabble.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡabl/

gabble

1. talk, prattle
   • 1867, “A YOLA ZONG”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 2, page 84:

     Ha deight ouse var gabble, tell ee zin go t'glade.

     You have put us in talk, 'till the sun goes to set.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 41