prate
/pɹeɪt/
prate noun: talk to little purpose; trifling talk; unmeaningful loquacity.
Noun
prate (countable and uncountable, plural prates)
Verb
prate (third-person singular simple present prates, present participle prating, simple past and past participle prated)
- To talk much and to little purpose; to be loquacious; to speak foolishly.
- Thou ſowre and firme-ſet Earth / Heare not my ſteps, which they may walke, for feare / Thy very ſtones prate of my where-about, / And take the preſent horror from the time, / Which now ſutes with it.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
- What nonsense would the fool, thy master, prate, / When thou, his knave, canst talk at such a rate!1697, Virgil, “Pastorl 3”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- blabber, babble, bat the breeze, blab, blather, carp, chat, chatter, chew the fat, chew the rag
prate meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Kannada and Sanskrit
prate in Urdu
- بک بک کرنا, گپ شپ کرنا
prate in Bengali
- অসার, অর্থহীন বকবক করা
prate in Kannada
- ಹರಟೆ, ವ್ಯರ್ಥಾಲಾಪ, ಪೊಳ್ಳು ಮಾತು, ಕಾಡುಹರಟೆ, ಸೊರಗು, ಹರಟು
prate in Sanskrit
- to talk much, to chatter
- लपति lapati
Synonyms of prate
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of prate
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | prates |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | prates |
| present participle | prating |
| past participle | prated |
| past | prated |
Origin of prate
From Middle English praten; either inherited from Old English prætt or borrowed via Middle Dutch or Middle Low German praten (from Old Saxon *pratt), all from Proto-West Germanic *prattu, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *prattuz (“idle or boastful talk, deceit”), from Proto-Indo-European *bred- (“to wander, rove”). Related to Dutch praten (“to talk, chat”), Low German praten, dated German pfrassen, Danish prate, Swedish prata (“to talk, prate”), Faroese práta (“to talk, gossip”), Icelandic prata;; also cognate with Polish bredzić (“to rave, jabber”), Latvian bradāt (“to talk nonsense”).
Words formed from prate
Words that rhyme with prate
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- mate
- late
- bate
- create
- date
- relate
- vibrate
- wait
- deflate
- fate
- migrate
- rebate
- rotate
- strait
- supererogate
- translocate
- await
- eight
- freight
- skate
- alternate
- collate
- debate
- inflate
- sedate
- update
- compensate
- delate
- dilate
- fixate
- grate
- Haight
- hate
- implicate
- innate
- intercalate
- locate
- mandate
- negate
- overweight
- pinnate
- quadrate
- tate
- vacate
- aerate
- calibrate
- castrate
- conflate
Questions about prate
- What does prate mean?
- Prate means talk to little purpose; trifling talk; unmeaningful loquacity.
- What is prate in Urdu?
- Prate in Urdu is بک بک کرنا, گپ شپ کرنا. See Prate meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is prate?
- Prate can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce prate?
- Prate is pronounced /pɹeɪt/.
- What is the plural of prate?
- The plural of prate is prates.
Words near prate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: prate (page history and authors); prate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prate (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-prate.ogg.
Cite this entry: “prate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.