gab
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ɡæb/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- Rhymes: -æb
Etymology 1
[edit]Inherited from Middle English gab, gabbe, from Old Norse gabb (“jest, mockery”) (whence also Old French gab, gap (“mockery, derision, scorn”)). Cognate with Icelandic gabb (“hoax”).
Noun
[edit]gab (countable and uncountable, plural gabs)
- Idle chatter.
- 2019, Robert Eggers, Max Eggers, The Lighthouse (motion picture), spoken by Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe):
- 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!
- The mouth or gob.
- One of the open-forked ends of rods controlling reversing in early steam engines.
- 1940 July, S. Richards, “Locomotive Valve gear Development”, in Railway Magazine, page 412:
- 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.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
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Etymology 2
[edit]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”).
Verb
[edit]gab (third-person singular simple present gabs, present participle gabbing, simple past and past participle gabbed)
- (intransitive, obsolete) To jest; to tell lies in jest; exaggerate; lie.
- 1866, Charles Kingsley, chapter 12, in Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 181:
- 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”
- (intransitive) To talk or chatter a lot, usually on trivial subjects.
- (transitive, obsolete) To speak or tell falsely.
Synonyms
[edit]- See also Thesaurus:speak.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
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Anagrams
[edit]Amanab
[edit]Noun
[edit]gab
- a large dove
Danish
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Old Norse gap, verbal noun to gapa (“to gape”).
Noun
[edit]gab n (singular definite gabet, plural indefinite gab)
Inflection
[edit]German
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]gab
Old French
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]gab oblique singular, m (oblique plural gas, nominative singular gas, nominative plural gab)
- joke
- c. 1177, Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, page 50 (of the Livres de Poche Lettres gothiques edition, →ISBN, line 96:
- Est ce a certes ou a gas?
- Is this certain or in jest?
Related terms
[edit]References
[edit]- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (gab)
- gab on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub
Old High German
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Verb
[edit]gab
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/æb
- Rhymes:English/æb/1 syllable
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old Norse
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English transitive verbs
- en:Talking
- Amanab lemmas
- Amanab nouns
- Danish terms derived from Old Norse
- Danish lemmas
- Danish nouns
- Danish neuter nouns
- German 1-syllable words
- German terms with IPA pronunciation
- German terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:German/aːp
- Rhymes:German/aːp/1 syllable
- German non-lemma forms
- German verb forms
- Old French terms borrowed from Old Norse
- Old French terms derived from Old Norse
- Old French lemmas
- Old French nouns
- Old French masculine nouns
- Old French terms with quotations
- Old High German non-lemma forms
- Old High German verb forms