What's the difference between junk and prattle?

Junk


Definition:

  • (n.) A fragment of any solid substance; a thick piece. See Chunk.
  • (n.) Pieces of old cable or old cordage, used for making gaskets, mats, swabs, etc., and when picked to pieces, forming oakum for filling the seams of ships.
  • (n.) Old iron, or other metal, glass, paper, etc., bought and sold by junk dealers.
  • (n.) Hard salted beef supplied to ships.
  • (n.) A large vessel, without keel or prominent stem, and with huge masts in one piece, used by the Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Malays, etc., in navigating their waters.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We propose that "junk" DNA in eucaryotes functions to maintain total DNA at an optimum concentration.
  • (2) People are eating a lot of junk food and rejecting traditional food,” he told the BBC .
  • (3) Russia’s credit rating has been downgraded to junk status for the first time in a decade due to the collapsing oil price, the tumbling value of the rouble and sanctions imposed because of its intervention in Ukraine.
  • (4) ITV's investment in children's programming has also been damaged by the ban on advertising junk food.
  • (5) At half-time time Pardew acted, junking his entire left side, bringing on Martin Kelly and Bakary Sako.
  • (6) • The following correction was published on 5 February 2012: "Downgrades, debt and junk: key questions about the eurozone crisis answered" (Business), said: "The [Eurozone financial stability facility] fund has already committed large sums to Greece, Ireland and Portugal and will need to raise more money should Italy and Spain need the same kind of help."
  • (7) Myths that suggest that the obese are inactive, eat differently, or eat more junk food suggest that obese individuals are socially deviant and justifies the intense discrimination directed against them.
  • (8) Long stretches of DNA previously dismissed as "junk" are in fact crucial to the way our genome works, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.
  • (9) These include a mechanism to assess which shows have an "above average" appeal to under-16s and therefore cannot run any junk food ads.
  • (10) Russia is spending 2.3tn roubles (£22bn) to shore up its economy as sanctions bite and after its debt was downgraded to junk.
  • (11) Conservatives blame the problems of sexual violence on western values, immodest dress or even on the over-consumption of junk food.
  • (12) And who is leading the charge to junk our membership of the single market?
  • (13) For each trial of the DNMS task, two stimuli were randomly selected from a pool of 250 small "junk" objects; one member of the pair was designated as the sample.
  • (14) The Real Junk Food Project , a charity which operates a chain of “pay as you feel” cafés using surplus food, now has two Sharehouse food stores connected to its operations in Leeds and Sheffield.
  • (15) Numerous documents prove that executives at leading banks, credit agencies, and mortgage brokers were falsely touting assets as sound that knew were junk: the very definition of fraud.
  • (16) Spain defied renewed pressure to accept an international bailout on Thursday, a stance that could last for several more weeks or even months despite the humiliation of having its credit rating cut to near junk status.
  • (17) Stock markets around the world plunged today after Standard & Poor's cut Greece's credit rating to junk status and downgraded its view of Portugal in the clearest evidence yet that the European sovereign debt crisis is spreading.
  • (18) Any evidence of a fresh split among European policymakers will increase anxiety in the financial markets, which were rattled on Wednesday by news that ratings agency Moody's had downgraded Portugal's debt to junk status.
  • (19) Dr Aseem Malhotra, an NHS cardiologist who campaigns against junk food, said the study "adds further fuel to the fire that sugar really is the 'silent killer' and is independent of body weight".
  • (20) The attack happened in a normal part of Delhi, at 9pm and no one can possibly allege that she was behaving in a way that was 'not in keeping with Indian traditions' and all that junk," Gupta said.

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.