Etymology From gab + -le. Cognate with Saterland Frisian gabbelje (“to mock”), Dutch gabbelen (“to chatter, babble”), German Low German gabbeln (“to mock”).
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 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
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 more examples
Americans are always drinking in crossroads saloons on Sunday afternoon; they bring their kids; they gabble and brawl over brews; everything’s fine.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC:
Does she regard him simply as a workman come to do a job for her, someone whom she need never lay eyes on again; or is she gabbling to hide discomfiture?2013, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 16, in The Childhood of Jesus, Melbourne, Australia: The Text Publishing Company, page 144:
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, page 43:
Etymology From gab + -le. Cognate with Saterland Frisian gabbelje (“to mock”), Dutch gabbelen (“to chatter, babble”), German Low German gabbeln (“to mock”).
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: