What's the difference between babble and prattle?

Babble


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter words indistinctly or unintelligibly; to utter inarticulate sounds; as a child babbles.
  • (v. i.) To talk incoherently; to utter unmeaning words.
  • (v. i.) To talk much; to chatter; to prate.
  • (v. i.) To make a continuous murmuring noise, as shallow water running over stones.
  • (v. i.) To utter in an indistinct or incoherent way; to repeat, as words, in a childish way without understanding.
  • (v. i.) To disclose by too free talk, as a secret.
  • (n.) Idle talk; senseless prattle; gabble; twaddle.
  • (n.) Inarticulate speech; constant or confused murmur.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Also analogues seem to be the producing of the so-called instinctives as mam(m)a and papa by somewhat older babies which are able to pass over from the babbling into permanent words of the adults' speech in which they persist if used without shifting of sounds since they are produced de novo generation by generation, but they are subordinate to shifting and possible extinction if used in the form of derivatives in the standard language, and some phenomena of the phylogenesis as the survival of less differentiated species contrary to the relatively quick extinction of the highly specialized ones.
  • (2) Then there's me and my buddy Ralph Garman , who does a daily radio show in LA, doing our entertainment podcast Hollywood Babble-On , which is basically just two guys who've worked in showbiz long enough to have informed opinions, sitting around taking the piss out of the entertainment industry.
  • (3) To listen to Gordon Brown this morning was to hear a babble of incoherent assertions, delivered very fast and with striking vigour and confidence, which in no way amount to an intellectual case for power.
  • (4) Phonetic transcriptions of 48 babbling samples from 11 normally hearing subjects, aged 4-18 months, and 39 samples from 14 hearing-impaired (HI) subjects, aged 4-39 months, were analyzed to determine the inventory of consonantal phones for each recording session.
  • (5) Significant monosyllabic-word-list intelligibility improvements are shown in hearing-impaired and in normal-hearing subjects for virtually any environmental noise, including white noise, babble (interfering background conversations), cafeteria noise, high-frequency noise, and low-frequency noise at signal-to-noise ratios to below -20 dB.
  • (6) Furthermore, low-frequency amplification, as used in this study, resulted in no observable degradation in syllable recognition in the presence of multitalker babble.
  • (7) These findings suggest both qualitative and quantitative differences in the babbling of the two groups.
  • (8) Our goal was to illuminate the role of canonical (well-formed syllabic) babbling in the development of speech by mentally retarded children.
  • (9) These findings indicate that for children with specific expressive language delay, vowel babble competes with expressive language, consonantal babble facilitates expressive language, and the length and social responsiveness of babble are independent of expressive language.
  • (10) Thinking of this kind makes Ai not only a great artist, but a thinker of the world's next political and intellectual phase, beyond the turgid babble of contemporary politics.
  • (11) This investigation examined phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling of infants from 0.7 to 0.11.
  • (12) The masking noise is an amplitude-modulated, speech-shaped noise signal, which is designed to simulate a 4-person speech babble in order to assess both the frequency selectivity and the temporal resolution.
  • (13) Acoustic-phonetic differences in the babbling of the two boys were evident in the 8-month sample (the first recording opportunity), and some differences between them became greater over the succeeding samples at 12 and 15 months.
  • (14) Additional testing with a smaller group of patients was carried out with competing noise (speech babble).
  • (15) The role of babbling in language development is not well understood.
  • (16) When both groups listened to speech that had been compressed and presented in a babble, their performance supported a multiplicative distortion theory, with children in the learning disabilities group showing a slightly greater multiplicative effect than the children with no apparent problems.
  • (17) For instance: "Very early experiences need to be rich in touch, face-to-face contact and stimulation through conversation (or reciprocating baby babble).
  • (18) Links between babbling and speech point to innate factors in the ontogeny of spoken language and invite attention to central control mechanisms.
  • (19) For someone who loves art but to whom the art world sounds like babbling in an invented language, this is godsend.
  • (20) Contrary to prevailing accounts of the neurological basis of babbling in language ontogeny, the speech modality is not critical in babbling.

Prattle


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To talk much and idly; to prate; hence, to talk lightly and artlessly, like a child; to utter child's talk.
  • (v. t.) To utter as prattle; to babble; as, to prattle treason.
  • (n.) Trifling or childish tattle; empty talk; loquacity on trivial subjects; prate; babble.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The talk coming from senior Tories – at least some of whom have the grace to squirm when questioned on this topic – suggesting that it's all terribly complicated, that it was a long time ago and that even SS members were, in some ways, themselves victims, is uncomfortably close to the kind of prattle we used to hear from those we called Holocaust revisionists.
  • (2) An immensely cerebral man, who trained himself to need only six hours of sleep - believing that a woman should have seven and only a fool eight - Mishcon was not a man given to small talk, nor one who would tolerate prattle for the sake of it.
  • (3) Comparisons between present-day China and the soulless, dreary totalitarian socialist state immortalised in Orwell's masterpiece are difficult to sustain after seeing clutch after clutch of Chinese teenagers, dressed in the latest quasi-Japanophile fashion, walk down a mobbed Beijing pedestrian shopping arcade nibbling at bouquets of candy floss and prattling on as if the phrase "commodity fetishism" had never crossed their young lips.
  • (4) The opening prattle this week is all about the seven deadly sins.
  • (5) I think they're about to escort me from the building for prattling on in an unGuardian manner.
  • (6) Melancholia itself would have been talking point enough without Von Trier's prattling.
  • (7) These days depression is the stuff of postprandial dinner-party prattle, but Plath explored the condition with no sense of its being a "condition" that others shared, no established therapeutic vocabulary, and no Prozac.
  • (8) The South Americans have played 25 games, and are guaranteed to play two more including tomorrow's match • Three of Diego Forlán's four goals in World Cup finals history have come from outside the box 7:10pm: As ITV's panel prattling on about how surprising it is to see harmony in the Dutch camp - exagerrating the divisions of the past and reinforcing the view that English society remains stubbornly anti-intellectual (and anti-male knitting), afraid of anyone who does not fear to speak his mind - let's see what's happening in Uruguay.
  • (9) Anyway, I won't prattle on for there is more live action to be found: San Jose Earthquakes vs LA Galaxy is about to kick off.
  • (10) Or it could be that the Sun loves me when I'm a prattling, giggling, Essex boy "Shagger of the Year", when I'm in my proper place, beneath vacuous headlines, herding their flock towards dumb lingo and crap bingo, when I'm being cheeky on MTV or even unwisely invading answerphones, in a way that many would argue, is less offensive than the manner that they are alleged to have done.
  • (11) Inexperienced MPs who prattle on about deeper UK involvement in Syria don’t yet grasp how merely symbolic much of it is nowadays.
  • (12) When I hear him prattle on inanely I can imagine how Neil Lennon felt when the Geordie dullard kicked him in the head."
  • (13) 2.30pm BST If you'd like to see me, Ian Prior, Barry Glendenning and Owen Gibson prattling on in front of a camera about Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement, then you're in luck!
  • (14) The forced cheerfulness of Nicholson's earlier scenes with the hotel manager are a sharp contrast to the sense of anger and tension as he drives and listens to his wife and son prattle on.