Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To speak rapidly or incoherently; jabber.
- v. To make rapid, low muttering or quacking sounds, as a goose or duck.
- v. To utter rapidly or incoherently.
- n. Rapid, incoherent, or meaningless speech.
- n. The low muttering sound of a goose or duck.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 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.
- n. Loud or rapid talk without sense or coherence.
- n. Inarticulate chattering, as of fowl.
- n. Synonyms See prattle, n.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To talk fast, or to talk without meaning; to prate; to jabber.
- v. To utter inarticulate sounds with rapidity; -- used of fowls as well as people.
- n. Loud or rapid talk without meaning.
- n. Inarticulate sounds rapidly uttered; as of fowls.
WordNet 3.0
- n. rapid and indistinct speech
- v. speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
Etymologies
- Probably frequentative of gab. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“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
“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.”
“gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like”
““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”
“Gabble, gabble, gabble, gabble, quack, quack, quack and cock a doodle do — Will you scold Betsy Howyes for me?”
“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.”
“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.”
“I thought perhaps she had cast some strange glamour upon you to make you gabble so stupidly.”
“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.”
“A torrent of jokes and questions followed, an immediate understanding, a rich gabble of Russian, as if the languages of Western Europe had been flimsy formal cages in which they had been too long confined, or paltry substitutes for true human speech.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gabble’.
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phrontistery - g
from phrontistery.info
gynaecology, gynaecomania, gyromancy, gyrograph, gyve, gyrus, gyron, gynaecocracy, gyrose, gynics, gutturotetany, gymnophobia and 439 more...
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This week's words
hand-handled, crouch, hootchy-kootchy, gloriole, glory hole, metempsychosis, doctrinaire, transmigration, celestial, treetop, luxuriant, physic and 102 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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huck finnian
ain't, stretchers, without, sivilize, hogshead, victuals, bulrushers, tolerable, goggles, middling, reckoned, who-whooing and 287 more...
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That's right, another list
muck-a-muck, ipse dixit, solipsism, anticlinal, analogical, amoral, alogical, synclinal, disinclined, iconological, studly, flitch and 179 more...
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-bles
fine find endings
able, amble, bable, cable, cible, coble, dable, fable, gable, gible, tible, table and 241 more...
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Tawkward
Verbal 'wtf' exchanges; odd moments of conversation and socializing.
somniloquy, bafflegab, syllepsis, sesquipedalian, whinge, divulge, anacoluthon, anaphora, sumpsimus, persiflage, eristic, overtones and 198 more...
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On The Road
Words gathered while reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac.
jailkid, lovething, worklife, longbody, benny, lout, dingledody, intellectualness, huaraches, twink, pisscall, buddhistic and 109 more...
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The Amulet of Samarkand
Words and phrases from Jonathan Stroud's The Amulet of Samarkand.
flunky, provenance, pare, rabbit in a covert, short shrift, bunker, trainers, tatty, lob, injunction, doss, bluster and 193 more...
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The Golem's Eye
Words and phrases from Jonathan Stroud's book, The Golem's Eye.
ordure, widdershins, cop, stipple, ostler, struts, minaret, chemise, remonstrate, concussion, wicket, vamoose and 249 more...
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english
gullet, boon, vixen, squalor, mire, revelry, levy, embossed, revulsion, vanquish, snivel, milksop and 84 more...
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Gossip Column
What's the scuttlebutt? Inspired by an OUP blog post.
clacket, chatterbox, tonguester, prattle-basket, whitter-whatter, gabble, chelp, chirm, tittle-tattle, bribble-babble, snatter, psilology and 35 more...
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hagendas 2009
aptronym, legerdemain, canard, unctuous, pianissimo, paterfamilias, odious, poetaster, mellifluous, fantod, sacristan, debouch and 65 more...
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alternatives to say (to reveal charac...
for the character building workshop in 3 ESO
babble, bark, blurt, bellow, brag, chortle, chuckle, groan, grumble, gasp, growl, gabble and 29 more...
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Hogwash!
nonsense, tripe, twaddle, bullshit, poppycock, palaver, balderdash, baloney, gobbledygook, bunk, claptrap, hooey and 88 more...
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rduke's Words
misguggle, ken, sere, etiolated, gelid, digladiate, popinjay, bathykolpian, conglaciation, hyperborean, callipygian, vagile and 1253 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gabble.
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