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gab

noun
/ɡæb/

Etymology

From Middle English gabben, from Old English gabban (“to scoff, mock, delude, jest”) and Old Norse gabba (“to mock, make sport of”); both from Proto-Germanic *gabbōną (“to mock, jest”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ- (“to be split, be forked, gape”). Cognate with Scots gab (“to mock, prate”), North Frisian gabben (“to jest, sport”), Middle Dutch gabben (“to mock”), Middle Low German gabben (“to jest, have fun”).

  1. derived from *gʰeh₁bʰ-✻
  2. derived from *gabbōną✻
  3. derived from gabba
  4. derived from gabban
  5. derived from gabben

Definitions

  1. Idle chatter.

    • Ah, find some chirk in ye, lad. Now is the time for gab and chatter. Y’best be enjoying it. Come a fortnight and the brace of us’ll be wantin’ to be ever silent as the tomb. Even to clap eyes on each other... It’ll make y’hotter than hell!

  2. The mouth or gob.

  3. One of the open-forked ends of rods controlling reversing in early steam engines.

    • Loose eccentric reversing gear gave way about 1836 to the early forms of gab motion. [...] In 1840 Stephenson evolved a motion in which the gabs were connected directly to the valve spindle.
  4. ›+ 5 more definitions

    1. To jest

      To jest; to tell lies in jest; exaggerate; lie.

      • He would chant his own doughty deeds, and “gab,” as the Norman word was, in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and outvied each other in impossible fanfaronades”

    2. To talk or chatter a lot, usually on trivial subjects.

      • "That Mrs. Mender gives a bloke the ear-ache; thinks a bloke's got all day to waste listening to her gab."

    3. To speak or tell falsely.

    4. Initialism of gender-atypical behavior.

    5. A diminutive of the male given name Gabriel.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gab. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA