- chat
- chat vb Chat, gab, chatter, patter, prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, gibber denote to emit a loose and ready flow of inconsequential talk or as nouns the talk so emitted.To chat is to talk in light, easy, and pleasant fashion{
in easy mirth we chatted o'er the trifles of the day before— William Whitehead
}{passed an hour in idle chat
}To gab is to talk trivia glibly and long, often tiresomely{came in to tea and sat there gabbing till ten o'clock— J. W. Carlyle
}{luncheon gab among women— Portz
}To chatter is to talk aimlessly, incessantly, and (often) with great rapidity{it was she who chattered, chattered, on their walks, while ... he dropped a gentle word now and then— Conrad
}{my chatter was as gay and sprightly as birdsong— Warren
}To patter is to speak or repeat rapidly and mechanically{pattering prayers half inaudibly
}or glibly and volubly often without much regard to sense{they're college-reared and can patter languages— Buchan
}{the patter of an auctioneer
}To prate is to talk idly and boastfully{a prating fool shall fall— Prov 10:8
}The word is often specifically used in reproach implying platitudinous or fulsome boasting or a readiness to talk at length about things of which the speaker is really ignorant or has only superficial knowledge{we may prate of democracy, but actually a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born— Quiller-Couchy
}To prattle is to talk like a child (as in artlessness and freedom or sometimes in lack of substance and sense){prattled on . . . in this vein, spewing up the squalid confusion of his thoughts— Anthony We st
}{we are . . . charmed with the pretty prattle of children— Sidney
}Babble, gabble, jabber, and gibber basically imply a making of sounds suggestive of speech but lacking the meaning content, intelligibility, and articulateness of normal adult human speech{a brook babbled among the stones
}{the noisy gabble of geese
}{monkeys jabbering in the trees
}{an idiot mewling and gibbering
}As applied to human speaking or speech all four terms are somewhat derogatory and especially suggest lack of clarity in both articulation and content{the babble of four or more voices going on at once—G. A. Miller
}{saying nothing comprehensible, just babbling and gabbling, half unconsciously— Bennett
}{subjected to gabble about fifteenth-century politics— McCarten
}{must we fall into the jabber and babel of discord— Sir Winston Churchill
}{listened to gibber about . . . our present form or methods of government— The Nation
}{the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets— Shak.
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
