jabber
/ˈdʒabə
/- Big Bill is so desperate for attention these days that he might actually show up, and then you'd have a hard time getting rid of him as he jabbered on into the wee hours while your other guests stifle yawns and sneak peeks at their watches.
- He jabbers, raves, and gestures to no one, in contradiction to the more subdued Hamlet of productions such as the 2000 Ethan Hawke film version.
- Your neighbor may spend the whole flight jabbering on their mobile.
Synonyms
- Some of the Kagan / Lewis conversation about bloggers consisted, for the most part, of often incomprehensible jabber like this.
- Demetrius is frustrated with Hermia's jabber and constant chatter and tells her he did nothing of the sort.
Synonyms
Derivatives
jabberer
/ nounOrigin
Late 15th century: imitative.
chat from Middle English:
In medieval times chat was formed as a shorter version of chatter, which itself started life as an imitation of the sound made by people chatting away, rather as jabber (Late Middle English) and twitter (Late Middle English) imitated the sound they described. The chattering classes are liberal, well-educated people, often working in the media, who are fond of expressing their views on any and every subject. This name for them has been around since at least the early 1980s. The success of the website called Twitter has led to heated debate among users as to whether what they do should be called to twitter or to tweet (mid 19th century)—yet another word imitating the sound of birds. See also jargon