What's the difference between chatter and prattle?

Chatter


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter sounds which somewhat resemble language, but are inarticulate and indistinct.
  • (v. i.) To talk idly, carelessly, or with undue rapidity; to jabber; to prate.
  • (v. i.) To make a noise by rapid collisions.
  • (v. t.) To utter rapidly, idly, or indistinctly.
  • (n.) Sounds like those of a magpie or monkey; idle talk; rapid, thoughtless talk; jabber; prattle.
  • (n.) Noise made by collision of the teeth, as in shivering.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I have had the awe-inducing pleasure of standing alone among the giant trees, both sequoias and redwoods, and hearing nothing but the chatter of the squirrels and the high wind in the tallest branches.
  • (2) The selective kappa antagonists Mr1452 and Mr2266 significantly precipitated only urination and teeth chattering.
  • (3) Also note chatter of Bernanke stepping down next week (6-weeks early), if successor Yellen gained full Senate approval, allowing her to chair the December FOMC meeting.
  • (4) Rumours and allegations about excesses, corruption and infighting, mostly made anonymously, are impossible to verify, though Riyadh’s chattering classes have heard them all.
  • (5) caused a significant decrease in DA levels accompanied by typical withdrawal symptoms such as wet dog shakes and teeth-chattering.
  • (6) Those whose ears catch the idle chatter from the more indiscreet members of Ed’s office have let drop that the leader was reportedly “furious” with Andy for raising not-so-oblique criticisms of the ‘hush now’ approach to party policy, and he could face the chop.
  • (7) Culture secretary Sajid Javid has said that ticket touts are “classic entrepreneurs” and their detractors are the “chattering middle classes and champagne socialists, who have no interest in helping the common working man earn a decent living by acting as a middleman”.
  • (8) In three visits to the area over the last two weeks, almost all the voters I spoke to began each conversation by saying, unprompted, that they were concerned about immigration – the electrician complaining about wages being undercut by eastern European workers, the parents unable to get their offspring into local primary schools because immigrant children were taking up scarce places, the patients waiting for a GP appointment in a waiting room filled with foreign chatter.
  • (9) • Try to ignore the noise around you: the chatter, the parties, the reviews, the envy, the shame.
  • (10) Hollow-eyed children beg outside restaurants and cafes that hum with the chatter of shisha-smoking customers.
  • (11) To many shoppers – and I exclude here members of the chattering classes, who were always rather sniffy about Tesco – the company’s decline has been evident for some time, at least for the two years that its market share has been falling.
  • (12) Few people outside Moscow’s inner ring road may be able to tell their Parmigiano Reggiano from their Grana Padano, but it is not only the chattering classes who have suffered from the cheese ban.
  • (13) Of the 12 withdrawal signs scored, the only significant changes observed after ibogaine (compared with vehicle control) was a decrease in grooming (10 mg kg-1) and an increase in teeth chatter (5 mg kg-1).
  • (14) There has been inevitable chatter that Lewis is being lined up to replace MacLennan when he retires.
  • (15) There has been some pre-fight chatter that a commitment to God by Pacquiao has made him too polite to knock out opponents.
  • (16) At bedtime, he used to find the music and background chatter from his sisters' rooms comforting.
  • (17) The chatter was that Osborne, David Cameron and Boris Johnson were heading off for a private dinner tonight somewhere in Davos.
  • (18) The chatter around the sale was remarkably light on the "need for private investment in Royal Mail" (the government's mantra since 2010) and rather more concerned with share value.
  • (19) There is no sound apart from the chickens and chatter of voices, young and old.
  • (20) Similarly, attack and teeth-chattering have been shown to derive from different neural mechanisms, despite substantial overlap of both response areas.

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.