Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To talk rapidly or unintelligibly.
  • intransitive verb To utter rapidly or unintelligibly.
  • noun Rapid or babbling talk.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Rapid talk with indistinct utterance of words; chattering.
  • To talk rapidly, indistinctly, imperfectly, or nonsensically; utter gibberish; chatter; prate.
  • To utter rapidly or indistinctly.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To utter rapidly or indistinctly; to gabble.
  • noun Rapid or incoherent talk, with indistinct utterance; gibberish.
  • intransitive verb To talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense; to chatter.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive To talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense.
  • verb transitive To utter rapidly or indistinctly; to gabble.
  • noun Rapid or incoherent talk, with indistinct utterance; gibberish.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun rapid and indistinct speech
  • verb talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English javeren, of imitative origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Imitative.

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Examples

  • But there's a lot of conversation, there's a lot of talk, there's a lot of jabber, which is very similar, they say, to what happened right before September 11.

    CNN Transcript May 22, 2002 2002

  • * Not known as a jabber Valero nevertheless out-jabbed a converted right-hander known for his solid stick 87-47.

    BoxingScene.com 2010

  • And if he was busy above stairs with the governor, there was another busy below with us poor English servants, a kind of subordinate priest, a low Italian; as he could speak no language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called

    Lavengro the Scholar - the Gypsy - the Priest George Henry Borrow 1842

  • And if he was busy above stairs with the governor, there was another busy below with us poor English servants, a kind of subordinate priest, a low Italian; as he could speak no language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called

    Lavengro The Scholar - The Gypsy - The Priest, Vol. 2 (of 2) George Henry Borrow 1842

  • And if he was busy above stairs with the governor, there was another busy below with us poor English servants, a kind of subordinate priest, a low Italian; as he could speak no language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called

    Lavengro; the Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest George Henry Borrow 1842

  • And if he was busy above stairs with the governor, there was another busy below with us poor English servants, a kind of subordinate priest, a low Italian; as he could speak no language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called

    Lavengro The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest George Henry Borrow 1842

  • If you have a friend who has even once referred to a foreign language as "jabber," travel far away from that friend, whose whole neighborhood is likely to be poisonous.

    Questions of travel 2009

  • If you have a friend who has even once referred to a foreign language as "jabber," travel far away from that friend, whose whole neighborhood is likely to be poisonous.

    Lance Mannion: 2009

  • The cashier was going on about how the freemasons are running the country because Bush was part of Skull and Bones at Yale, and how it really doesn't matter who you vote for because so was Kerry you just don't get this kind of jabber at the Safeway, do you?

    08/04 2004

  • The cashier was going on about how the freemasons are running the country because Bush was part of Skull and Bones at Yale, and how it really doesn't matter who you vote for because so was Kerry you just don't get this kind of jabber at the Safeway, do you?

    08/04 2004

Comments

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  • West Wing, converted to quarters

    where one jabbers into a phone

    devoid of connecting wire...

    - Peter Reading, Visit, from Tom O' Bedlam's Beauties, 1981

    June 28, 2008