Word.ws English Dictionary

jabbering

jabbering is the present participle and gerund of jabber.

Meaning of jabber

Verb

jabber (third-person singular simple present jabbers, present participle jabbering, simple past and past participle jabbered)

  1. (intransitive) To talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense.
    • Allanson made some sound in his throat, as if attempting to speak, but his tongue refused its office, and he only jabbered.1829, James Hogg, The Shepherd’s Calendar, New York: A.T. Goodrich, Volume I, Chapter 9, “Mary Burnet,” p. 184
  2. (transitive) To utter rapidly or indistinctly; to gabble.
    • 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

See all 6 meanings of jabber

Noun

jabbering (countable and uncountable, plural jabberings)

  1. Speech that jabbers; gibberish.

Forms of jabbering

pluraljabberings

Questions about jabbering

What does jabbering mean?
Jabbering means speech that jabbers; gibberish.
What is jabbering the present participle and gerund of?
Jabbering is the present participle and gerund of jabber.
What part of speech is jabbering?
Jabbering is a noun.
What is the plural of jabbering?
The plural of jabbering is jabberings.

Words near jabbering in the dictionary

  1. jabbered
  2. jabberer
  3. jabberers
  4. jabberfest
  5. jabberfests
  6. jabbering
  7. jabberingly
  8. jabberings
  9. jabberment
  10. jabbernowl
  11. jabbernowls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jabbering (page history and authors); jabber (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)-Wodencafe-jabbering.wav.

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