n. 1
Idle talk; senseless prattle.
v. 1
To utter words indistinctly or unintelligibly; to utter inarticulate sounds
The men were babbling, so we couldn't make sense of anything.
v. 2
To talk incoherently; to utter meaningless words.
v. 3
To talk too much; to chatter; to prattle.
She babbled on for hours about the importance of some new gadget.

Related words

Word family: babbler

Forms

Plural: babbles → gibberishes, chatters, jabbers, gossips…
Past participle: babbled
e.g. babbled → blabbed, talked, uttered, teld…

Choose the right word

Babble, Cackle, Gabble or Chatter?

The cackle of a hen, the gabble of a goose, the chatter of a magpie, the babble of a running stream, as applied to human speech, indicate a rapid succession of what are to the listener meaningless sounds.

J. C. Fernald, English Synonyms and Antonyms (1914)

Example sentences

chatter She finds comfort in silence rather than chatter.
gibberish Kalman started yelling some deep-throated gibberish.
jabber He spends all his time chatting online on Jabber.
twaddle Personally, I think it's a load of twaddle.
murmur Have you ever been diagnosed with a heart murmur?
mutter Tobias heard Isabella mutter: "Oh, shit!"

Popularity over time

Word	1850 → 2019	Trend
babble		rising
chatter		rising
gibberish		rising
jabber		rising
twaddle		steady
murmur		rising

Use in printed books, per decade from 1850 to 2019.

By length

4 letters: tell¹, talk¹, chat¹, sing¹, blab¹, purl
5 letters: trash¹, utter², spill¹, peach¹, fudge¹, clack¹, blurt¹, haver²
6 letters: bubble², rabbit², gossip², ripple², waffle², jargon², murmur², mutter², drivel², cackle², jabber, tattle², mander², gurgle²
7 letters: chatter², clatter², prattle², palaver, blather², twaddle², smatter², blither
9 letters: gibberish³, rigmarole, lallation
10 letters: balderdash³, rigamarole

The small number after each word is its number of syllables (utter² = 2 syllables).

In other languages

Français: bavardage
Español: charla