gab
/ɡæb/
gab noun: idle chatter.
Noun (1)
gab (countable and uncountable, plural gabs)
- Idle chatter.
- Ah, find some chirk in ye, lad. Now is the time for gab and chatter. Y’best be enjoying it. Come a fortnight and the brace of us’ll be wantin’ to be ever silent as the tomb. Even to clap eyes on each other... It’ll make y’hotter than hell!2019, Robert Eggers, Max Eggers, The Lighthouse (motion picture), spoken by Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), set in Maine, United States, during the 1890s with dialogue written to reflect the time period
- The mouth or gob.
- One of the open-forked ends of rods controlling reversing in early steam engines.
- Loose eccentric reversing gear gave way about 1836 to the early forms of gab motion. [...] In 1840 Stephenson evolved a motion in which the gabs were connected directly to the valve spindle.1940 July, S. Richards, “Locomotive Valve gear Development”, in Railway Magazine, page 412
Verb
gab (third-person singular simple present gabs, present participle gabbing, simple past and past participle gabbed)
- To jest; to tell lies in jest; exaggerate; lie.
- He would chant his own doughty deeds, and “gab,” as the Norman word was, in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and outvied each other in impossible fanfaronades”1866, Charles Kingsley, chapter 12, in Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 181
- To talk or chatter a lot, usually on trivial subjects.
- "That Mrs. Mender gives a bloke the ear-ache; thinks a bloke's got all day to waste listening to her gab."1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 26
- To speak or tell falsely.
Noun (2) capitalized: GAB
GAB (countable and uncountable, plural GABs)
Proper noun capitalized: Gab
Gab
- A diminutive of the male given name Gabriel.
gab meaning in Assamese
gab in Assamese
- Idle chatter
- বকনি bokoni
- to talk or chatter a lot, usually on trivial subjects
- বকা boka
Forms of gab
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | gabs |
| plural | GABs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | gabs |
| present participle | gabbing |
| past participle | gabbed |
| past | gabbed |
Origin of gab
Inherited from Middle English gab, gabbe, from Old Norse gabb (“jest, mockery”) (whence also Old French gab, gap (“mockery, derision, scorn”)). Cognate with Icelandic gabb (“hoax”).
From Middle English gabben, from Old English gabban (“to scoff, mock, delude, jest”) and Old Norse gabba (“to mock, make sport of”); both from Proto-Germanic *gabbōną (“to mock, jest”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ- (“to be split, be forked, gape”). Cognate with Scots gab (“to mock, prate”), North Frisian gabben (“to jest, sport”), Middle Dutch gabben (“to mock”), Middle Low German gabben (“to jest, have fun”).
Clipping of Gabriel.
Words formed from gab
Phrases with gab
Words that rhyme with gab
Questions about gab
- What does gab mean?
- Gab means idle chatter.
- What is gab in Assamese?
- Gab in Assamese is বকনি (bokoni), বকা (boka). See Gab meaning in Assamese.
- What part of speech is gab?
- Gab can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce gab?
- Gab is pronounced /ɡæb/.
- What is the plural of gab?
- The plural of gab is gabs.
Words near gab in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gab (page history and authors); GAB (page history and authors); Gab (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gab.wav.
Cite this entry: “gab.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gab. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.