yabble

yabble verb: to vocalize in a meaningless or incomprehensible manner.

Verb

yabble (third-person singular simple present yabbles, present participle yabbling, simple past and past participle yabbled)

To vocalize in a meaningless or incomprehensible manner.
- It's got everything : sandy beaches, where the seals bob up and yabble to you; cliffs with guillemots, kittiwakes and puffins; dozens of caves; hilltops with eagles; trees; skylarks.1963, Robin Jenkins, A Love of Innocence, page 27
- Mark swears it all began at the Mayan ruins of Tikal when we ate mushrooms and sat on pyramids and yabbled with the monkeys.1999, Bruce Northam, Brad Olsen, In Search of Adventure: A Wild Travel Anthology, page 375
To talk excessively; to babble.
- . “Well, because I've never said anything of any real value in my entire life.” He smiled. “I can yabble on at the mouth, telling people how I feel, asking them how they feel, but it's just fillin' the world up with more noise.”2002, Ethan Hawke, Ash Wednesday, page 18
- Let them yabble at me, if it gives them pleasure.2008, Leigh Brackett, The Ginger Star, page 98

yabble (uncountable)

Meaningless vocalizations or garbled speech.
- The beasts wi' joy ran headlang helter-skelter : Or hoo the folk wha built the Tower o' Babel Misun'erstood ilk ane the ither's yabble ;1861, James Nicholson, Willie Waugh
- They tower at the hideous shots stabbing from their well-loved pasture, and when at last they have put many yards of air between you and them they break out into that fierce wild yabble of anger and dismay.1947, The New English Review - Volume 14, page 252
Babbling; nonsensical talk.
- Whist, billies ; cease your angry yabble, And doucely lean you o'er the table.1883, Alexander G. Murdoch, The Scottish Poets Recent and Living, page 168
- Those children were growing up and I told him, “Your children never will learn to talk plainly while they live over in the back lot and listen to your yabble.”1915, University of the State of New York, Proceedings of the ... Convocation - Volumes 50-51
Chaotic confusion.
- Another time, Tony Hooper and I crossed from Hobson's Wharf to Northcote in a fibre-glass dinghy. We met a real yabble of a sea, with waves meeting at right angles.1985, New Zealand Archaeological Association, Newsletter - Volumes 28-29, page 214

yabble (comparative more yabble, superlative most yabble)

(dialectal) Able; capable.
- It made a man's heart sore to see bairns wantin' schoolin' and no yabble to get it.1858, Walter White, A month in Yorkshire, page 226
- Yon little mowdy-warp 'd nivver be yabble tee upset me, Mr. Bevan, not if he lived to be as awd as Mac Thuselah.1871, Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes - Volume 20, page 408
(dialectal) well-to-do.
- . We still hear of persons described as " Yabble bodies," meaning that they are well-to-do.1884, John Christopher Atkinson, Quarter Sessions Records - Volume 2, page 316
- One of these men, a member of an old and "yabble" (well-to-do) Danby family, was, if my memory serves me rightly, the retailer of a tradition, mentioned for my instruction, that in days gone by the race was always from the churchyard gate to the bride-door, and that the prize was not barely the...1891, John Christopher Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish

And of course they couldn't speak English, they just yabbled on and on in whatever language they spoke, waving their arms, and they were still yabbling when the police came to serve eviction notices.2006, Paul Lefebvre, Private Mail: Letters to Emily, page 321:
If you yabble too much Your rear'll be numb!2008, Len Bailey, Fantasms:
“OMD - I'm into their hi-energy sound, I'm working on the ultimate hienergy compilation,” yabbled Kevin without thinking, but before he could continue ...2015, Neil Raffan, Hunting Roundabouts:
It was a continuous yabble and glossolalia going on inside his mouth, but on different levels of goodbye, just as there always had been to his welcomes.2007, Jack Hirschman, Only Dreaming Sky: Poems, page 96:

Verb
third-person singular present	yabbles
present participle	yabbling
past participle	yabbled
past	yabbled
Adjective
comparative	more yabble
superlative	most yabble

What does yabble mean?: Yabble means to vocalize in a meaningless or incomprehensible manner.
How do you use yabble in a sentence?: And of course they couldn't speak English, they just yabbled on and on in whatever language they spoke, waving their arms, and they were still yabbling when the police came to serve eviction notices.
What part of speech is yabble?: Yabble can be a verb, a noun or an adjective.
What is the past tense of yabble?: The past tense of yabble is yabbled.

Adapted from Wiktionary: yabble (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: 2026-09-02

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