Word.ws English Dictionary

gabble

/ˈɡæbəl/

gabble verb: to talk fast, idly, foolishly, or without meaning.

Verb

gabble (third-person singular simple present gabbles, present participle gabbling, simple past and past participle gabbled)

  1. (ambitransitive) To talk fast, idly, foolishly, or without meaning.
    • 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 brutish1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
    • 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
  2. To utter inarticulate sounds with rapidity.
    • gabbling fowls
    • 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...

Noun

gabble (uncountable)

  1. Confused or unintelligible speech.
    • a lot of gabble from witnesses1914, G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown
    • [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

gabble meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

gabble in Tamil

உளறல், உளறு, பிதற்றல்

gabble in Urdu

بڑبڑ کرنا

gabble in Malayalam

gabble; meaningless talk
പ്രലപനം pralapanaṁ

gabble in Kannada

ಲೊಟಗುಟ್ಟು, ಬಡಬಡಿಸು, ಬೇಗಬೇಗನೆ ಅರ್ಥವಾಗದಂತೆ ಮಾತನಾಡು, ಉರುಬು ಮಾತಾಡು

Examples of gabble in a sentence

  • Or would it be too embarrassing to walk the streets with a gabbling dwarfin tow?
  • Fo speaks in “grammelot,” a kind of polyglot gabble speckled with an occasional intelligible word.
  • The ganders spread abroad, sheepwise, grazing, and gabbling as they grazed.

All 13 example sentences with gabble

Synonyms of gabble

Forms of gabble

third-person singular presentgabbles
present participlegabbling
past participlegabbled
pastgabbled

Origin of gabble

From gab + -le. Cognate with Saterland Frisian gabbelje (“to mock”), Dutch gabbelen (“to chatter, babble”), German Low German gabbeln (“to mock”).

Words formed from gabble

Phrases with gabble

Words that rhyme with gabble

Questions about gabble

What does gabble mean?
Gabble means to talk fast, idly, foolishly, or without meaning.
What is gabble in Tamil?
Gabble in Tamil is உளறல், உளறு, பிதற்றல். See Gabble meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is gabble?
Gabble can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce gabble?
Gabble is pronounced /ˈɡæbəl/.
What is the past tense of gabble?
The past tense of gabble is gabbled.

Words near gabble in the dictionary

  1. gabbies
  2. gabbiest
  3. gabbiness
  4. gabbing
  5. Gabbitas
  6. gabble
  7. gabbled
  8. gabblement
  9. gabblements
  10. gabbler
  11. gabbleratchet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gabble (page history and authors); gabble (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gabble (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); പ്രലപനം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); gabble (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gabble.wav.

Cite this entry: “gabble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gabble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.