jibber-jabber
noun / verb

- rapid, indistinct, or nonsensical talk

- to talk or utter rapidly, indistinctly, incoherently, or nonsensically

YourDictionary

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ORIGIN

Jibber-jabber is a coupling of “jibber” and “jabber”, which are themselves variants of the same onomatopoeic verb meaning “To speak rapidly and inarticulately; to chatter, talk nonsense”. “Jibber” (spelt “gibber”) was used by Shakespeare; “jabber” was recorded in 1499.

There are a number of similar words in English all meaning much the same thing - e.g. gabble, yabber, gab, jabble.

The first recording of “jibber-jabber” in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1922, but that doesn’t mean that was “the year it first appeared”. English-speakers’ love REDUPLICATED words. The marriage of “jibber” and “jabber” would have been a natural formation at any time in the last 400 years. Jibber-jabber appeared in Abel Boyer’s 1751 English/French Dictionary and defined as ‘to speak gibberish’.

from Gary Martin

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JIBBER-JABBER is an example of “reduplication”, a process in which words are formed by starting with one word, copying it with one slight change, and then saying it again.

You probably already know reduplications like criss-cross, King Kong, ship-shape, and tick-tock.

Some reduplications have been around for a long time - besides JIBBER-JABBER, these have been in common use for over 400 years:

hurly-burly = Tumult, Aufruhr
higgledy-piggledy = kreuz und quer, durcheinander
fiddle-faddle = Blühender Unsinn
pitter-patter = das Trappeln, das Prasseln
helter-skelter = Hals über Kopf
dilly-dally = trödeln

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English has several types of reduplication:

(1) Rhyming reduplication: hokey-pokey, razzle-dazzle, super-duper, boogie-woogie, teenie-weenie, walkie-talkie, hoity-toity, wingding, ragtag, easy-peasy, hurdy-gurdy.

(2) Exact reduplications (baby-talk): bye-bye, choo-choo, night-night, no-no, pee-pee, poo-poo.

(3) Ablaut (vowel) reduplications: chit-chat, hip-hop, ding-dong, jibber-jabber, kitty-cat, knick-knack, pitter-patter, splish-splash, zig-zag, flimflam, wibble-wobble. In the ablaut reduplications, the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated ablaut variant of the vowel is a low vowel.

(4) Shm-reduplication: can be used with most any word; e.g. baby-shmaby, fancy-shmancy, breakfast-schmeakfast, English-shmenglish, language-shmanguage, syllable- shmyllable. The practice of copying a word and sticking a shm- onto it came into the U.S. with Yiddish speakers in the late 19th century, and by the 1930s it had spread into general use. It’s a handy way of downplaying or dismissing something without being too aggressive or unfriendly. With shm- you can be simultaneously grumpy and cute (Mental Floss).

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Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“Aren’t you getting tired of hearing all this JIBBER-JABBER on social media?”

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Paul Smith