adj, noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   a stage in child language acquisition, during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering sounds of language, but not yet producing any recognizable words uncountable
2. 2
   gibberish resembling the sounds of a baby wordnet
3. 3
   sounds produced by infant during the babbling period countable, uncountable
4. 4
   Idle senseless talk; prattle. countable, uncountable
5. 5
   A confused murmur, as of a stream. countable, uncountable

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of babble form-of, gerund, participle, present

Adjective

1. 1
   That babbles.

Synonyms

All synonyms

arrestedbabblebabblebackwardbetrayalblithering

Example

More examples

"She is babbling with happiness."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English bablyng, babelynge, equivalent to babble + -ing.

Etymology 2

From Middle English bablyng, babelynge, babelinde, equivalent to babble + -ing.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.