yabble

English

Verb

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

1. To vocalize in a meaningless or incomprehensible manner.
   • 1963, Robin Jenkins, A Love of Innocence, page 27:

     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.

   • 1999, Bruce Northam, Brad Olsen, In Search of Adventure: A Wild Travel Anthology, page 375:

     Mark swears it all began at the Mayan ruins of Tikal when we ate mushrooms and sat on pyramids and yabbled with the monkeys.

   • 2006, Paul Lefebvre, Private Mail: Letters to Emily, page 321:

     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.

2. To talk excessively; to babble.
   • 2002, Ethan Hawke, Ash Wednesday, page 18:

     . “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.”

   • 2008, Leigh Brackett, The Ginger Star, page 98:

     Let them yabble at me, if it gives them pleasure.

   • 2008, Len Bailey, Fantasms:

     The mumpokers broke out in this chant: “The word is Mum! The word is Mum! If you babble as such We'll poke yer bum! If you yabble too much Your rear'll be numb!

   • 2015, Neil Raffan, Hunting Roundabouts:

     “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 ...

Noun

yabble (uncountable)

1. Meaningless vocalizations or garbled speech.
   • 1861, James Nicholson, Willie Waugh:

     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 ;

   • 1947, The New English Review - Volume 14, page 252:

     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.

   • 2007, Jack Hirschman, Only Dreaming Sky: Poems, page 96:

     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.

   • 1924, Adventure - Volume 47, page 150:

     The calm night awoke with clamorous sounds—charpoys overturning; a yabble-yabble of highpitched, frightened voices; a tinkle of broken glass; the rattle of whistles as the askaris took up the alarm and thudded in their bare feet through the dusty streets looking for the disturbance.

   • 1996, David McCordick, Scottish literature: an anthology, page 572:

     Was never sic a yabble! If e'er there was sic strife and clatter, Fracas o tongues and bellerin blatter, Twas at the towr o Babel.

2. Babbling; nonsensical talk.
   • 1883, Alexander G. Murdoch, The Scottish Poets Recent and Living, page 168:

     Whist, billies ; cease your angry yabble, And doucely lean you o'er the table.

   • 1915, University of the State of New York, Proceedings of the ... Convocation - Volumes 50-51:

     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.”

   • 1983, Chapman - Volumes 35-38, page 76:

     The fuitbaa commentator daes his speil on chances taen or missed: it's nocht but yabble, poleetical yabble at that, an nithin's waur, for Tapsalteerie tummles-the-wulkies for a leevin.

3. Chaotic confusion.
   • 1985, New Zealand Archaeological Association, Newsletter - Volumes 28-29, page 214:

     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.

Adjective

yabble (comparative more yabble, superlative most yabble)

1. (dialect) Able; capable.
   • 1858, Walter White, A month in Yorkshire, page 226:

     It made a man's heart sore to see bairns wantin' schoolin' and no yabble to get it.

   • 1871, Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes - Volume 20, page 408:

     Yon little mowdy-warp 'd nivver be yabble tee upset me, Mr. Bevan, not if he lived to be as awd as Mac Thuselah.

   • 1873, William Cullen Bryant, A Library of Poetry and Song:

     There's planty o' lads, i' beath Lamplugh an' Dean, As yabble as thee, an' as weel to be seen ;

   • 1887, Thomas Clarke (rector.), Specimens of the Dialect of Westmorland, page 4:

     "Wyah," sed Dick, "as mappm be yabble to mannish o this, an meear when a git theear."

2. (dialect) well-to-do.
   • 1884, John Christopher Atkinson, Quarter Sessions Records - Volume 2, page 316:

     . We still hear of persons described as " Yabble bodies," meaning that they are well-to-do.

   • 1891, John Christopher Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish:

     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 bride's garter, but the added privilege of taking it hemself from her leg as she crossed the threshold of her home.