gab
/ɡab
/informal
verb (gabs, gabbing, gabbed) [no object]
Talk at length: Celeste was gabbing about the country before the war...
- Half my workteam is gabbing about this already.
- Ross gabs regularly with a Georgian, his former Rangers team-mate Shota Arveladze, currently bagging goals for fun in Holland.
- So Dee asked me if I'd go and tell them to join the rest of us - we'd been in the about 5 mins, got our drinks and gone to join The Lovely Couple and friend, but idiot and Evil Bint were gabbing away at the bar.
noun [mass noun]
Talk; chatter: fans should prefer her smooth delivery to the gab prevalent around the league...
- As the clock-hands sweep into the witching hour, on October 30, a new season of gab and glitter will open at the Varscona Theatre.
- Montgomery's been in some superb bands and put out some solid solo records in the US, and I once had a nice long backyard gab with him about music over a keg.
- The talk and news shows are equally diverse, with channels devoted to both liberal and conservative gab, the audio from cable TV news networks and a National Public Radio feed.
Phrases
the gift of the gab
Origin
Early 18th century: variant of gob3.
gobsmacked from [1980s]:
The word gobsmacked presumably refers either to the shock of being hit in the mouth or to the action of clapping your hand to your mouth in astonishment. Gob, an informal word for ‘mouth’ (mid 16th century), may come from Scottish Gaelic gob ‘beak or mouth’. Gab, as in the gift of the gab and the adjective gabby, both early 18th century, are variants of gob. There is another gob (Late Middle English), ‘a lump of something’, that came into English from Old French gobe ‘mouthful or lump’ which may also be Celtic: gobble (early 17th century) is probably based on this gob.