twattle

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtwɒtəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

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Etymology 1

Compare tattle, twaddle.

Verb

twattle (third-person singular simple present twattles, present participle twattling, simple past and past participle twattled)

1. (archaic, transitive, intransitive) To talk in a digressive or long-winded way.
   • 1671, Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle, Natures Pictures drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, page 181:

     After all, she objected, Do not Men run visiting from House to House, for no other purpose but to twattle, spending their time in idle and fruitless discourse?

   • 1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC:

     Tis very well, Mistress, says he, and are you not a fine Gossiping Lady, do you think, to twattle your Husband thus out of his Life and Fortune?

   • 1858 January, “Dr. Wordsworth's Greek Testament”, in Bibliotheca sacra: a theological quarterly, volume 15, number 5, page 248:

     He now and then twattles a little , as an old gentleman may when lamenting the degeneracy of the evil times on which his gray hairs have fallen; but his Introductions and Notes are always gravely entertaining, and generally learnedly instructive.

   • 1860 May, “Literary Notices: Doctor Oldham at Greystones, and His Talk There”, in The Knickerbocker, volume 55, number 5, page 528:

     He has no story to tell, it is true, but is eminently readable, for he writes most forcible, idiomatic English, is never dull in his didactics, never twattles, is learned without pedantry, and although the topics treated are so diverse, yet there is a natural consecutiveness from first to last, and no abrupt transition.

Derived terms

• betwattled

Noun

twattle (countable and uncountable, plural twattles)

1. (archaic) Chatter; twaddle.
   • 1850 May, “Unjust Personalities”, in The American Journal of Homœopathy, volume 5, number 1, page 11:

     Continue, if you choose, your twattle against Homœopathy; distort it, misinterpret it, calumniate and deride its author; the unprejudiced legions will soon be able to decide on which side is the truth.

   • 1860, Hezekiah Lord Hosmer, Adela, the Octoroon, page 91:

     It concedes too much to you Northern fellows; and all the old man said about magnanimity was mere twattle.

   • 1876 January, Francis Gerry Fairfield, “An Unconventional View of Herbert Spencer”, in Phrenological Journal, volume 65, number 1:

     The penetrating power of that saying might atone for pages of twattle, and Carlyle has flashes of such tremendous insight as is only given to masters in literature.

   • 1970, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1st Baron), William Moy Thomas, The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, page 500:

     The lies, twattles, and contrivances about this affair, are innumerable.

Etymology 2

Unknown.

Verb

twattle (third-person singular simple present twattles, present participle twattling, simple past and past participle twattled)

1. (archaic, transitive) To make much of; to pet or coddle.
   • 1675, John Dryden, The Mistaken Husband:

     Never fear her, I warrant you, she that will ask for a weapon is not desperate; get you gone in to her, and twattle her out of the sullens if you can; if not, I'le not long be absent.

   • 1884 October 15, “Song”, in The Hull Quarterly and East Riding Portfolio, volume 1, number 4, page 155:

     For se waik an' se silly, an' helpless was I, I was always a tumbling down then, While me mother would twattle me gently, and cry Honey Jenny: tak' care o' thysen.

   • 1911, Richard Blakeborough, Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, page 484:

     Thoo twattles on wi ' ť pup ez if ' t wur a bairn.

Etymology 3

Noun

twattle (plural twattles)

1. (archaic) A dwarf.
   • 1598, John Florio, A Worlde of Wordes, page 486:

     PIGMEO, a pigmey, a kinde of little man like a dwarfe, a dandiprat, a twattle, or an elfe. Some thinke that they be but a kind of spirits ingendred of the corruption of the earth, even as the Scarab is bread of horses doung.

   • 2016, Shirley McKay, 1588: A Calendar of Crime:

     She had telt him, indignant, 'I am not ten.' 'No? An uncomely twattle, are ye no?' 'A twattle?' she had said. 'A mimmerkin. A dwarf.'

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “twattle”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References

• twittle-twattle