jabber

present singular third person jabbers · participle present jabbering · participle past jabbered · past jabbered

1. intransitiveTo talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense.

   1829, James Hogg, The Shepherd’s Calendar, New York: A.T. Goodrich, Volume I, Chapter 9, “Mary Burnet,” p. 184, Allanson made some sound in his throat, as if attempting to speak, but his tongue refused its office, and he only jabbered.

   2 more examples

   “What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 19”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

   The noise of their battle with Numa had drawn an excited horde of savages from the nearby village, and a moment after the lion’s death the two men were surrounded by lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering—a thousand questions that drowned each ventured reply.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 125

2. transitiveTo utter rapidly or indistinctly; to gabble.

   He wept very little, but when he wept he howled aloud, and jabbered wild abuse, threats and recriminations through the wet torrent of his howling.

   1939, H. G. Wells, The Holy Terror, Book One, Chapter 1, Section 2

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   She had Lord James' collar in one big fist and she pounded the table with the other and talked a blue streak. Nobody could make out plain what she said, for she was mainly jabbering Swede lingo, but there was English enough, of a kind, to give us some idee.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

1. uncountableRapid or incoherent talk, with indistinct utterance; gibberish.

   Two tongues from the depths, Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike, Fling their staccato tantalizations Into a wildcat jabber Over a gossamer web of unanswerables.

   1918, Carl Sandburg, “Jabberers”, in Cornhuskers, New York: Henry Holt & Co, page 68

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   1735, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, in The Works of Jonathan Swift, edited by George Faulkner, Dublin, 1735, Volume 3, A Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson, pp. v-vi, And, is there less Probability in my Account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many Thousands even in this City, who only differ from their Brother Brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a Sort of a Jabber, and do not go naked.

   Mark Pauline has a good line of gab, in his elliptical, left-handed fashion. He's at relative rhetorical ease with classy theoretical jabber such as emergent behavior, cyborganics, chaos theory, transparent interfaces, artificial life, and the machinic phylum.

   1996 July, Bruce Sterling, “Is Phoenix Burning”, in Wired, →ISSN

plural jabbers

1. One who or that which jabs.

   Have the boys box, one jabbing and the other practicing the methods of boxing a jabber.

   1939, Edwin L. Haislet, Boxing in Education, page 160

2. informalOne who administers a hypodermic injection.

   Like Claire, these “secret jabbers” are keeping it private even from their closest family and friends.

   2025 May 11, Imogen West-Knights, “‘I lost so much weight, my husband thought I was terminally ill’: why do people lie about taking Ozempic?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

3. A kind of hand-operated corn planter.

   The jabber was the most popular hand-operated corn planter ever devised. […] Inset shows jaws closed for jabbing (left) and open for depositing kernels (right).

   1999, Nicholas P. Hardeman, Across the Bloody Chasm