gabble

present singular third person gabbles · participle present gabbling · participle past gabbled · past gabbled

1. ambitransitiveTo talk fast, idly, foolishly, or without meaning.

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

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

   3 more examples

   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

   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]

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

   1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC

   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?

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

2. To utter inarticulate sounds with rapidity.

   gabbling fowls

   1 more example

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

   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

1. uncountableConfused or unintelligible speech.

   a lot of gabble from witnesses

   1914, G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown

   1 more example

   [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.

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