Prate
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Talk to little purpose; trifling talk; unmeaningful loquacity. countable, uncountable
- 2 idle or foolish and irrelevant talk wordnet
- 1 To talk much and to little purpose; to be loquacious; to speak foolishly. ambitransitive
"Thou ſowre and firme-ſet Earth / Heare not my ſteps, which they may walke, for feare / Thy very ſtones prate of my where-about, / And take the preſent horror from the time, / Which now ſutes with it."
- 2 speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly wordnet
Example
More examples"Thou ſowre and firme-ſet Earth / Heare not my ſteps, which they may walke, for feare / Thy very ſtones prate of my where-about, / And take the preſent horror from the time, / Which now ſutes with it."
Etymology
From Middle English praten; either inherited from Old English prætt or borrowed via Middle Dutch or Middle Low German praten (from Old Saxon *pratt), all from Proto-West Germanic *prattu, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *prattuz (“idle or boastful talk, deceit”), from Proto-Indo-European *bred- (“to wander, rove”). Related to Dutch praten (“to talk, chat”), Low German praten, dated German pfrassen, Danish prate, Swedish prata (“to talk, prate”), Faroese práta (“to talk, gossip”), Icelandic prata;; also cognate with Polish bredzić (“to rave, jabber”), Latvian bradāt (“to talk nonsense”).
Related phrases
More for "prate"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.