Jabber

/ˈd͡ʒæbə(ɹ)/ · verb

Meaning

(intransitive) To talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense..

Definitions by Sense

1. (intransitive) To talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense.
2. (transitive) To utter rapidly or indistinctly; to gabble.
3. Rapid or incoherent talk, with indistinct utterance; gibberish.
4. One who or that which jabs.
5. (informal) One who administers a hypodermic injection.
6. A kind of hand-operated corn planter.

Example Sentences

1829, James Hogg, The Shepherd’s Calendar, New York: A.T. Goodrich, Volume I, Chapter 9, “Mary Burnet,” p. 184, Allanson made some sound in his throat, as if attempting to speak, but his tongue refused its office, and he only jabbered.

“What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.

The noise of their battle with Numa had drawn an excited horde of savages from the nearby village, and a moment after the lion’s death the two men were surrounded by lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering—a thousand questions that drowned each ventured reply.

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.

He wept very little, but when he wept he howled aloud, and jabbered wild abuse, threats and recriminations through the wet torrent of his howling.

1735, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, in The Works of Jonathan Swift, edited by George Faulkner, Dublin, 1735, Volume 3, A Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson, pp. v-vi, And, is there less Probability in my Account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many Thousands even in this City, who only differ from their Brother Brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a Sort of a Jabber, and do not go naked.

Two tongues from the depths, Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike, Fling their staccato tantalizations Into a wildcat jabber Over a gossamer web of unanswerables.

Mark Pauline has a good line of gab, in his elliptical, left-handed fashion. He's at relative rhetorical ease with classy theoretical jabber such as emergent behavior, cyborganics, chaos theory, transparent interfaces, artificial life, and the machinic phylum.

Synonyms for jabber

Antonyms for jabber

Related Words

Word Forms

• jabbers
• jabbering
• jabbered

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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