the.com/babble
the sound of thought outrunning sense, charming until it's your turn to listen
means To talk rapidly, foolishly, or incoherently — a stream of words with the meaning rinsed out, or the soft burbling chatter of a baby or a brook.
from An imitative word, born from the noises babies make — that 'ba-ba-ba' is roughly universal across languages, which is why babble-like words crop up everywhere (compare the French 'babiller'). It surfaced in Middle English and likely owes nothing to clever roots and everything to the simple fact that 'bab' is what mouths do before they know what they're saying. The resemblance to the biblical Tower of Babel is a tempting coincidence, but the two are unrelated — Babel comes from Akkadian, while babble comes straight from the cradle.
- origin
- likely imitates baby's ba-ba-ba, not a real root
- infant stage
- babies babble in every language's sounds first
- tower of babel
- gave us the word for confused speech
- brooks too
- water babbles, no mouth required
babel fish — fictional creature from douglas adams' hitchhiker's guide that translates all languages by absorbing brain waves
tower of babel — biblical structure in ancient mesopotamia where god confused human languages according to genesis 11
babble app — language learning platform founded 2017 with ai conversation partners for practicing speaking