What's the difference between prattle and swill?

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.

Swill


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To wash; to drench.
  • (n.) To drink in great draughts; to swallow greedily.
  • (n.) To inebriate; to fill with drink.
  • (v. i.) To drink greedily or swinishly; to drink to excess.
  • (n.) The wash, or mixture of liquid substances, given to swine; hogwash; -- called also swillings.
  • (n.) Large draughts of liquor; drink taken in excessive quantities.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It's a small sample, consisting of the folk on the train to Kings Cross this lunchtime, but your MBM correspondent saw: several gentlemen swilling from cans of San Miguel and talking excitedly about the World Cup; two blonde women in frankly disorienting 1980s style football shorts waving flags; and a bloke sitting on his own necking a tin of pre-mixed gin and tonic.
  • (2) Then go beg the lady with the clipboard, while others swan past to join the cocktail-swilling vacationers swathed in white linen on the porch.
  • (3) Alastair Butler, a free-range pig farmer, said most pig farmers were against the reintroduction of swill feeding because of the "real risk" to their animals and livelihood.
  • (4) The Bank of England, the big energy companies and media groups such as Rupert Murdoch’swill all be watching particularly closely, having heard Corbyn warn he wants either to reduce their independence, bring them under more “social” control or break them up.
  • (5) It described the Pig Idea as a "superficially attractive concept, promoted by well-meaning people, but it is destined to fail because it is fundamentally unsafe, and the European Union will not be persuaded to lift its zero-tolerance ban on feeding swill to pigs."
  • (6) "Transplanting the Pirates Of The Caribbean aesthetic to the Wild Wild West proves disastrous in The Lone Ranger, an indigestible swill of forced humour and oversized, overbearing action sequences," he writes.
  • (7) It's what we expect of the modern detective: a solitary, whisky-swilling wolf, with a chip on the shoulder as big as a .38 and nights spent alone on a sofa that one suspects is covered in stains.
  • (8) Ten months since it finally receded, the foul brown floodwater that swilled knee-deep through Steve and Kay Wilton’s home for much of February has, it seems, left its mark on more than just their once-pristine 19th-century farmhouse.
  • (9) Further down Seoul Street, the huge Grandkhaan Irish Pub has been entertaining beer-swilling ex-pats and travellers since 2005.
  • (10) "There is a lot of [advertising] money swilling about the pot now Lite and the London Paper are going," says a senior Associated source.
  • (11) This neutralises and dilutes the acid that swills around after the breakdown of food by bacteria that normally live around your teeth and gums.
  • (12) "For these reasons, we believe the risk of swill feeding is just too great."
  • (13) The source of zinc was flaking galvanising from the inside of bins used to store swill before processing.
  • (14) Click here to view On his Acid Rap mixtape, which was downloaded 50,000 times the day it was released, Chance reveals himself to be more interested in the mind-expanding qualities of LSD than poppin' molly or swilling Grey Goose.
  • (15) Dr Gillian Lockwood, from the Midland Fertility Centre, suggested recently that as women are having babies later and later, young women should seriously consider freezing their ova in their early 20s for use in their late 30s – after their clichéd life of high-flying career, martini-swilling, cigarette-wafting and spanx-filling.
  • (16) The revelation is an insight into some of the tricks employed by clubs, agents and other middle men when such vast sums of money are swilling around before the transfer deadline.
  • (17) Under its proposals, it could be mandatory for food waste to be treated in centralised processing plants to ensure all swill was safe to be used as feed.
  • (18) The warm bath of mutualised treacle that swilled around Westminster at the beginning of the week has turned toxic.
  • (19) He was the absolute opposite of the chain-smoking, whiskey-swilling, bar-brawling father whom I had loved so dearly as a child and who was the reason that our lives had always been such utter mayhem.
  • (20) Yet, the band called Queen, the lead singer a tights-wearing Mercury, were going down a storm with the beer-swilling rockers who just didn't seem to be consciously aware of what was strutting before their eyes.