"Jabber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and their backs would get broken. So when they were big enough they sat on the floor and she talked to them and told them funny things and acted 'em off and laughed, and they'd laugh too. It was like a play to see 'em. And they'd jabber back and she'd make b'lieve she understood it all. She was a wonderful child's nurse an' there'll be trouble enough without her. But the babies went to bed early an' then she'd come down an' wipe the dishes for me an' they made no call on her. But Jack was a holy terror, he was that ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... appendage in place of a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military doctor whom I ever met. As a rule, they are not an attractive set. Almost invariably Constantinopolitans, they jabber execrable French fluently enough, and affect European manners in a way which is truly disgusting: add to this a natural disregard of cleanliness, and an obtrusive familiarity, and nothing more is wanted to complete the picture. Of their professional ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... five years before, just where he left it, with the words "Heri discebamus" (Yesterday we were teaching). What a lesson in this remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... entreated all the magistrates and men of authority in the land to wait on Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, to consult with them on the immediate erection of a large hospital, with a pool of Bethesda attached to it. All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid her; continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many others who pretended to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... haven't much taste that way. Father has us educated according to our tastes; that is, if we show a little talent for any one thing, he has us try to perfect ourselves in that one thing. Julia is the linguist, and can jabber French and German like natives. Father also insisted on our being taught the common English branches very thoroughly, and he says he could get us situations to teach within a month, if it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... from the five who were completely psychotic. The weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... seen the monkeys' cage in the beast-garden here. That is the world. It is not strength, or merit, or talent, or reason that is of any use there; it is just which monkey has the skill to squeeze to the front and jabber through the bars, and make his teeth meet in his neighbours' tails till they shriek and leave him free passage—it is that monkey which gets all the cakes and the nuts of the folk on a feast-day. The monkey is not bad; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... bother, smash! You'll have it all in a crash. Jabber, smash, bother! You'll have the worst of the pother. Smash, ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... God, but the holiest nigger is, in my opinion, the one that's nearest the devil. Then you saw yourself, Captain Meadows, how they went on during the voyage, reading books that was writ on wood instead o' paper, and sitting up right through the night to jabber together on the quarter-deck. What did they want to have a chart of their own for and to mark the course ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He's the best-looking man in the bunch. He's so tall and straight, too, and so—so bishop-y in the set of his clothes. They fit him. But he doesn't jabber as much as the rest. I s'pose 'twould be just like the things that happen to me to find out that that giant bean-pole which keeps teetering around the room is the bishop." She indicated a very tall, very slender man, who at that moment chanced ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... unfinished longer tales, but brought none of them to completion. The German drama interested him. Once he wrote to Mr. Rogers that he had translated "In Purgatory" and sent it to Charles Frohman, who pronounced it "all jabber and no play." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beggars in the streets of Rome and Naples; so much squalidness and misery; no cleanliness; an utter want of comfort; and such superstition; and such an absence of all true and evangelical seriousness. They push and fight while Mass is going on; they jabber their prayers at railroad speed; they worship the Virgin as a goddess; and they see miracles at the corner of every street. Their images are awful, and their ignorance prodigious. Well, Willis saw all this; and I have it on good authority," ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... silence in the huddled group of men. Then the newspapermen came to life and excited talk became a jabber of words around them. Trent took the arm of Mathieson and turned him. He tried to lead the scientist away from the newspapermen but one of them stepped forward and ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... rapidly wore off. Now, on either side, appeared a fleet of fishing canoes, the wild songs of their naked crews coming across the water, as with rugged sails of matting lolling at their ease, they steered towards the shore. We overtook some of them, and such a loud jabber as they set up, talking to each other, or hailing ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... no doubt of it—if I would listen to your wretched jabber! Enough! if you talk any more I'll go home again. A fine state of things, truly—that I am to have my mind dissipated when I'm in working trim by the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... God that he tells us we ought to feel! Love a God like that! If he were as good as my mother, I would love him! But we have all to look out to protect ourselves from him! Mr. Parson, there's no such being as you jabber about! It puzzles me to think what ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... lifting her black eyes to her father's; "I ain't no account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no college education, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take advantage of a lazy, gawky boy—for it ain't anything else, though he's good meanin' enough—that happened to fall sick in ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after time the curious yellow faces would bend over the picture, the inscrutable slant eyes would study the face, sometimes silently, sometimes with a disheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not one trace of Binhart ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... You are ugly. You are badly dressed. My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous—a duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gonville and Caius. Here I am; and I choose ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 400 B.C. The instrument is dumb. Ingenuity has been shown also in the invention of "talking-machines," like Faber's, based on the reed organ pipe. These automata can be made by dexterous manipulation to jabber a little, like a doll with its monotonous "ma-ma," or a cuckoo clock; but they lack even the sterile utility of the imitative art of ventriloquism. The real great invention lies in creating devices that shall be able to evoke from tinfoil, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots. It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... endeavoured to retrace my steps to the open, where I hoped my shipmates might see me and effect a rescue, but I now perceived that whichever way I turned my path was barred by these wild men. The savages now began to jabber to each other in a jargon which I could not comprehend, and presently two of them laid hold of me, one by each arm, and in spite of my protests and such resistance as I made, forced me through the scrub inland. Some of the tribe followed, others went on ahead, flitting like shadows ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... had nothing to do with either the Boers or their laws. Many attempts were made during these visits to elicit the truth about the guns and cannon; and ignorant of the system of espionage which prevails, eager inquiries were made by them among those who could jabber a little Dutch. It is noticeable that the system of espionage is as well developed among the savage tribes as in Austria or Russia. It is a proof of barbarism. Every man in a tribe feels himself bound to tell the chief every thing that comes to his knowledge, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"—(O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)—the chambermaid is laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tuck a great likin' to childern," said he; "but I kindy liked little Clint; his cheeks was so soft, and smooth, and his eyes snapped sich funny fire; and he was olers so full o' his cunnin' jabber. I hope the painters haint ketched him. They yelled despotly last night; but I hope they haint ketched him yit. I'd like to see him agin, and baird his dimple face for ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... them when one does not know what they are talking among themselves; they jabber like Jews, and when they talked to me they were poking fun at me. Besides, there was some talk of free distribution ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... course. I don't care to talk to everybody, MYSELF. If a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say 'Well, I must be going now—hope I'll see you again'—and then I take a walk. Where ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... character and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When at last that which we have always longed for is arrived and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to be critical and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any religion but this, to know that wherever in ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sign to Miss Ponsonby; she rose, and followed him into the garden. 'I cannot endure the jabber of these men,' said ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say and Speak ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... blame him. He has no business to be so partial to you. All the difference between us is, that you can jabber Dutch a little. That isn't worth ten dollars a week extra. He's down on me for something or ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... with his clawlike hands, as if he understood me not. It was a lie, for I knew that he and the English tongue were sufficiently acquainted. I told him as much, and he shot at me a most venomous glance, but continued to shrug, gesticulate, and jabber in Italian. At last I saw nothing better to do than to take him, still by the collar, to the edge of the garden next the churchyard, and with the toe of my boot to send him tumbling among the graves. I watched him pick himself up, set his attire ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... process had not passed, it need hardly be said, unobserved; and by the time that our meal was concluded quite a large audience of women had gathered round to witness the performance. The animated jabber and hearty ringing laughter of several of the younger women and the somewhat abashed yet pleased expression of our own particular friend seemed to indicate that badinage was not altogether unknown, even in this obscure African village. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... from all I've heard, this Paris is an awful place and—good-by. Good-by. In Lucerne in two days or Interlaken in three. It's got to be that, or back I come, remember. I HATE to leave you all alone amongst these jabberin' foreigners. I'm glad you can jabber, too, that's one comfort. If it was me, all I could do would be to holler United States language at 'em, and if they didn't understand that, just holler louder. I—Yes, Mr. Hepton, I AM comin' ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... crowd's to be at Andrews' by 4, and it's fully that now; so come on at once. We'll go 'round by Munson's and have Hi send a boy to look after your horse. Come; and I want to introduce my friend here to you, and we'll all want to smoke and jabber a little in appropriate seclusion. Come on." And the impatient Major had linked arms with his hesitating ally and myself, and was turning the corner of ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... to the so-called battle-field before leaving for the South. We started in a covered waggonette with no springs to speak of, drawn by six mules, and a pair of horses as leaders. Two Kaffirs acted as charioteers, and kept up an incessant jabber in Dutch. The one who held the reins looked good-natured enough, but the other, whose duty it was to wield the enormously long whip, had a most diabolical cast of countenance, in which cruelty and doggedness were both clearly ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... How the Frenchmen did jabber away, and ask us all sorts of questions, none of which we could answer, from not being able to muster a word of French amongst us. The other boats came up, and then there was still more jabbering; and then the Frenchmen made us all get ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could have found foot-hold. Great gray and black gulls screamed against ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... married to the same man, so each had decided to try a little change, whereupon Lizzie, the second waitress—a buxom Irish girl who despised "furriners" in general and Japanese in particular—bid Oku hold his tongue and not jabber such heathenish nonsense. ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... it may easily be imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished me not a little, as well they might; for they proved ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... over the level field in the dusk. A quarter of a mile away the light glimmered in the hut of his Chinese help, and there came the good-natured jabber of their supper activities. He felt the expansive thrill of the planter, the employer—the man who organizes an enterprise and ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, and no musician was ever more in earnest, ever more soul-tied ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... what you were saying that I lost the thread of my story. We were listening to an excited jabber of nonsense in the hotel—for instance, one of the negro servants said you went away of your own free will—and wondering what on earth we could do, when this genii of an Arab came to me in a mysterious way, and led me straight on your track. Shall ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to have improved amazingly in the two months you have been away," the latter said, as they came out from the shop; "you seem to jabber ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... iron—they had no iron—but flint or bone shaped by a flint knife. Where the paint was not splashed or patterned over them, their faces could be liked very well. Lips were not over full, the nose slightly beaked, the forehead fairly high, the eyes good. They did not jabber nor move idly but kept measure and a pleasant dignity. They seemed gentle and happy. So were they when we ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... a pleased and confident jabber among the slingers and archers below as the birds arrived. The catapult was turned about toward us, and lashed tightly to stakes driven in front and behind. Then the birds were hitched to the cord of the immense bow, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... was more than the English master or Teeny-bits expected. The four Chinese, who had been observing in apparent astonishment this sudden performance on Teeny-bits' part, gazed at the mark and began to jabber among themselves in a manner that showed plainly enough their excitement and agitation. One of them even took a step nearer as if to obtain a clearer view. Chuan Kai, however, quickly brought their demonstration to an end. He exclaimed sharply in his singsong language and stepped toward them ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... maneuver in visible astonishment. They drew together and talked it over, flew down close to the Clubhouse, flew about it in circles, examined it on every side, made even one perilous trip across the roof, the tips of their feet tapping it in vicious little dabs. But flutter as they would, jabber as they would, the Clubhouse preserved a tomb-like silence. After a while they banged on the shutters and knocked against the door; but not a sound or ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... as soldiers, of any in the regiment, but this Seventh regiment when it went into action jabbered and talked Dutch to exceed in volubility any female sewing society ever assembled. As they came up and got into position the volume of jabber almost overcame the rattle of musketry and the roar of artillery. I am certain their conduct did not favorably impress our men. If the German Emperor's army is not made of grimmer stuff than I saw exhibited in ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... rapidity that was comical, for Ariadne had the upper hand now. Rose adored pretty things, longed to wear them, and the desire of her girlish soul was to have her ears bored, only Dr. Alec thought it foolish, so she never had done it. She would gladly have given all the French she could jabber for a pair of golden bells with pearl-tipped tongues, like those Ariadne wore; and, clasping her hands, she answered, in a tone that ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called Holy Mary, and the power and grandeur of one whom he called the Holy Father; and he told us that we should shortly have an opportunity of seeing the Holy Father, who could do anything he liked with Holy Mary: ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... time for brooding. They have to pump ahead to save what remained of their capital stock. But Khalid, nevertheless, would brood and jabber. And what an inundation ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... jabber that is likely to lead to a very good result. A cousin of his is one of the guard that came down with us. He has told this warder about our fight, and asked him to say that he and his comrades were very angry at ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... now an important city—and made fast to our buoy. Instantly the ship was surrounded by sampans, and the occupants, not a few of whom were Chinese, swarmed aboard, eager to find buyers for the fruit, sake, and other articles which they had for sale. The jabber of tongues was incessant and deafening, and the importunities of the salesmen a trifle annoying; but Nakamura quickly sent them to the right-about, and inviting me to go up on the bridge with him—we were staying aboard ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... eye-sight. I shall never forget them. The one was as tall as a giant, with much tawny moustache, like the coat of a badger, growing about his mouth. He had a huge ruddy face, and looked dull and stupid, as he no doubt was, for when I spoke to him, he did not seem to understand, and answered in a jabber, valgame Dios! so wild and strange, that I remained staring at him with mouth and eyes open. The other was neither tall nor red-faced, nor had he hair about his mouth, and, indeed, he had very little upon his head. He was very diminutive, and looked like a jorobado (hunchback); but, valgame ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... mark, with regret, that self has introduced itself here. The heartless loquacity—we must say heartless, for, in a matter of such deep interest, facility of speech bespeaks the feelings light—the unshrinking jabber with which people tell you their soul's history—their past impressions and present difficulties—their doctrines and their doubts—their manifestations and their experiences—not in the ear of confidence, to have those doubts removed and those doctrines verified; ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... engaged in cutting an inscription on the tombstone of his wife, recently dead; and a poor idiot, who found his living in the kitchen, and to whom the deceased had shown kindness; used to come every day to the churchyard, to sit beside me, and jabber in broken expressions his grief. I was struck with the extremeness of his idiocy: he manifested even more than the ordinary inability of his class to deal with figures, for he could scarce tell whether nature had furnished him with one head or with two; and no power of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Roscoe's uncle, failed to appreciate pwes, which were now held within stated bounds; he preferred out-of-door entertainments, as the heat, the smoke, the smell of raw plantain skins, the band, and the jabber ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... camp, assisting the white hunter, several squaws began an excited jabber that brought ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... he was startled by a piercing scream to the rear. He backed out from the tunnel and stood upright once more. He heard the sound of people splashing round in water. The screamer began to jabber like a maniac, punctuating his ravings with shrieks. Another was cursing vehemently, and a third appealing to the saints. Lermontoff quickly knelt down in the watercourse, this time facing the upper cell, and struck his ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... turns the orgin—the best I ever 'eard— Oh lor' he does just jabber, but you can't make out a word. I can't abear Italians, as allus uses knives, And talks a furrin lingo all their miserable lives. But this one calls me BELLA—which my Christian name is SUE— And 'e smiles and turns 'is orgin very proper, that he do. Sometimes 'e plays a polker ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... you were a big scholar, Mr Jack, sir," continued Ned, "but I didn't think you were up to this jibber-jabber.—Thankye, old chap. Nice state you've got my hands in though. Why, I don't believe the size gloves I should want are made. Look, Mr Jack, about four-and-twenty they'd ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Burmese Interprut'r an' my clanin'-rod. Sez I to the man, "My paceful squireen," sez I, "you shquot on your hunkers an' dimonstrate to my frind here, where your frinds are whin they're at home?" Wid that I introjuced him to the clanin'-rod, an' he comminst to jabber; the Interprut'r interprutin' in betweens, an' me helpin' the Intilligince Departmint wid my clanin'-rod whin ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was marked, stained abominably, that he went from her presence. He said to himself: "I've dished myself now with my silly jabber. Damn ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... was ankle deep everywhere. And such a lot of Negroes; shiftless, lazy dogs, black as the ace of spades and twice as natural. But the little "nigs" kill me outright, they looking so much like a lot of monkeys, I know of nothing so comical. I could sit half the morning watching them and hearing them jabber. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... the last landing-place, each carrying over his shoulder a small but heavy sack. A large weighing-machine, that had been used for cargo at the last port, stood on the deck; and round this the fishermen had gathered, and, with much unintelligible jabber, seemed ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... could not have idled away the time even if she had wanted to, for the Mexican woman came for her, with smiling gesticulation and jabber that manifestly meant dinner. Carley could not understand many Mexican words, and herein she saw another task. This swarthy woman and her sloe-eyed husband favorably ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... on my knees, they could not see me, nor could I see them; but their laughter and their infernal jabber—for these buccaneers were the sweepings of half-a-dozen nations—came to my ears as distinct as though I stood among them. And under the grip of terror I crawled to the front of the gallery and peered ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... baby haff come ter town! Jabber und jump till der day gone down— Jabber und sphlutter und sphlit hees jaws— Vot a Dutch baby dees Londsmon vas! I dink dose mout' vas leedle too vide Ober he laugh fon dot altso-side! Haff got blenty off deemple und vrown—? Hey! Leedle Dutchman ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... finish!" he cried. "You seem to think jabber does everything. The end of it all is, that either you give me the money or I take it—and ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... in the same tone as before. "Just fancy a chap like you turned into an officer. You can jabber a few words of French, and may have picked up a smattering of navigation on board the Foxhound, though I've a notion you must pretty well have forgotten all you knew by this time, and you may be fond of books, but all that won't turn a fellow who has come out of the gutter, ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... certain hour in the public walks, without wearing any other dress than that in which he saw him. "The fellor has got no more stuff in his pate," continued this polite stranger, "than a jackass, to think I could not find my way hither thof I could not jabber your French lingo. Ecod! the people of this country are sharp enough to find out your meaning, when you want to spend anything among them; and, as for the matter of dress, bodikins! for a thousand pound, I would engage to live in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and barely perceptible smile of satisfaction addressed to me, he turned to the woman. And no sooner had he turned to her, than his whole face altered. He said, in a peculiar, scornful, hasty tone, such as is employed towards dogs: "What do you jabber in that careless way for? 'I sit in the taverns.' You do sit in the taverns, and that means, to talk business, that you are a prostitute," and again he uttered the word. "She does not know the name for herself." This tone offended me. "It ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... dwelling, while others, who have neither the one accommodation nor the other, deposit their receptacles for the weary on the pavement in the street. The black domestics form a tertulia on the door-steps or squat together in dark unoccupied parts of the corridors. Their jabber is incessant and occasionally requires a gentle reminder. Sometimes one of their company essays a wild melody, accompanying his song on a primitive instrument of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... something that makes things infernally uncomfortable for other people," said Choate bluntly. "Did you know she had squads of them—Italians, Poles, Abyssinians, for all I know, playing on dulcimers—she's had them come up at night and visit her in her bedroom. They jabber and hoot and smoke, I believe. She's established ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... jabber, and jabber that is likely to lead to a very good result. A cousin of his is one of the guard that came down with us. He has told this warder about our fight, and asked him to say that he and his comrades were very angry ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... very fine," said the bosun gloomily, "but what about the lingo, sir? We may dress up as much as you like, but nohow can we twist our tongues to the jabber of these Frenchies, and I could no more march a score of miles without using my clapper than I could ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... never saw a Wallachian eating or silent. They talk like madmen, and drink like madmen. In drinking they use small phials, the contents of which they pour down their throats. When I first went amongst them I thought the whole nation was under a course of physic, but the terrible jabber of their tongues soon undeceived me. Drak was the first word I heard on entering Dacia, and the last when I left it. The Moldaves, if possible, drink more, and talk more ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... short dresses and high bodies or shirts, and their cheeks, noses, and foreheads thickly covered with red paint. Both parties soon set up a lively jabber in Sioux; but General Parker gave a sign, and all were ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... arrived within a couple of hundred yards of the open. Sick of the oppressive jungle, and eager for the change to a type of country with which they were more familiar, they were swinging on through the tree-tops at a great pace, when that savage, snarling jabber which they so dreaded was heard in the branches behind them. Grom instantly put A-ya in the lead, while he himself dropped to the rear to meet this deadliest of perils. There was no need to urge his party to haste; but it seemed to them all as ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... recover; but flutter worse and worse, till it crack; and within year and day we hear of her in madhouse, and straitwaistcoat, which proves permanent!—Such brownlocked Figure did flutter, and inarticulately jabber and gesticulate, little able to speak the obscure meaning it had, through some segment of that Eighteenth Century of Time. She disappears here from the Revolution and Public History, for evermore. (Deux Amis, vii. 77-80; Forster, i. 514; Moore, i. 70. She did not die till 1817; in the Salpetriere, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the talk of the aborigines. Some think it is the English word jabber, with the first letter pronounced as in German; but it is pronounced by the aborigines yabba, without a final r. Ya is an aboriginal stem, meaning to speak. In the Kabi dialect, yaman is to speak: ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... "There it is again! A Mingo talkin', a Seneca, I'd say—Hear that jabber! Delaware—Wyandot—Taway (Ottawa). With a blanket o' Shawnee pow-wow. By heavens, Morris! This is Cornstalk's whole force. They've learned that Dunmore is at the Hockhockin' an' will be j'inin' up with Lewis ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... grown too fly. You've got only to pass a remark on his sail-cloth coat to make him shut up. All the town knows it. But he's got you to listen to his crazy talk whenever he chooses. Don't I hear you two at it, jabber, ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... "Ho!" "He!" and "Hi!" respectively, in varying tones according to their varied character. Then they commenced a jabber, which we are quite unable to translate, and turned Tom over on his back. The motion awoke him, for ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... in Italy tended to confirm him in the political opinions which he had adopted at home. To the last he always spoke of foreign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory fox-hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French, and to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like the language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent, which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... great deal of fuss and bustle on board the brig, while the Frenchmen were clearing away and lowering the boats; then, with a vast amount of jabber, they went down the side, took their places, and shoved off, with me ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... greeted them as they entered. At little tables lit up by pink candles sat small groups of shirt fronts and butterfly ties with fair heads and pretty frocks. Waiters were coming and going with champagne and silver dishes; there was a clatter of knives and forks, and a jabber of voices and laughter. And all the time there came the sounds of the band, with the "Tra-la-la" from the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... a self-respect—not a bold, disagreeable assurance, but a sort of rough, unassuming dignity that was both pleasant and becoming. He did not sit down with his hat on, and his chair tilted backward, and chatter and jabber as if he were of quite as much importance as his benefactor, but stood respectfully, with uncovered head, and answered Mr. Bond's questions modestly and politely, and waited to be asked before he made himself at home in ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... received a boy about seven or eight years old. The boy had traveled four months across the desert from Lake Chad. He knew nothing of his home country, had even forgotten his mother tongue, and could jabber only some fragments of speech picked up from the other slaves of the caravan. As a result of the long journey he was emaciated to a skeleton and so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand up. He ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... "Lay off that jabber, old bucks, the two of ye!" commanded Officer Rellihan, swinging across the room. "I'm here to kape th' ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Chippewa girls are good enough for Chuck. I ain't counting on taking up with those Frenchies. I don't like their jabber, from what I know of it. I saw some pictures of 'em, last week, a fellow in camp had who'd been over there. Their hair is all funny, and fixed up with combs and stuff, and they look real ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabber. My dear, Mrs. Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... perceived it, and as we went home together, congratulated me on my good fortune. But so far was Bruin from entertaining the least suspicion, that he encouraged me to begin a conversation with my mistress in a language unknown to him, by telling her, that he had a gentleman who could jabber with her in French and other foreign lingoes as fast as she pleased; then, turning to me, said, "Odds bobs! I wish you would hold discourse with her in your French or Italian, and tell me if she understands it as well as she would be thought ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... in front of us, his bare feet plashing from log to log and mud-heap to mud-heap, his gray woolly head wagging right and left, and his cutlass brushing almost instinctively at every bough he passed, while he turned round every moment to jabber something, usually in Creole French, which, of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... harlot, naturally frank and truthful, with some liking for me (for she looked forward to our voluptuous dallyings), she gave me for a long time much amusement, and I heard the incidents of her short life. She would jabber like a magpie about them when she knew me well, which she soon did, and began to look to me regularly for her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... well for you to sit there jabber, jabber, jabber, Miss Dora," exclaimed the unceremonious Elizabeth; "you're dressed, all but your bonnet. You've only just to pop that on, and there you are. But my young lady isn't half dressed yet. And now, come along, Miss Laura, and have your hair ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... noticed about her was the pleasure it gave her to refer to her husband or to quote him. Her prattle was so full of, "My husband says, says my husband," that it seemed as though the chief purpose of her jabber was to parade her married state and to hear herself talk of her spouse. The words, "My husband," were music to her ears. They actually meant, "Behold, I am an old maid ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... always wanted to revolt about something, anyway. One of my ancestors helped throw the English breakfast tea into Boston Harbour. But I don't want to get all het up about this unless there's really something in it besides jabber." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... fierce-looking chaps, Mahomet Singh and Abdullah Khan by name, both old fighting-men who had borne arms against us at Chilian-wallah. They could talk English pretty well, but I could get little out of them. They preferred to stand together and jabber all night in their queer Sikh lingo. For myself, I used to stand outside the gate-way, looking down on the broad, winding river and on the twinkling lights of the great city. The beating of drums, the rattle of tomtoms, and the yells and howls of the rebels, drunk ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about everywhere that Lantier was a friend and a true one. People might jabber about them; he knew what he knew and did not care a straw for their gossip, for he had respectability on his side. When they all three went out walking on Sundays, he made his wife and the hatter walk arm-in-arm before him, just by way of swaggering in the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... blunder in And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame— No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war, When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you; And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts That drive them out to jabber among ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... we could hear the flocks of birds flying in the air and feel the stamping feet below as herds of animals ran in every direction. We heard the vibrant jabber of monkeys from tree-tops, and each time a new tree fell there was more jabbering and more leaping away ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... it took," went on Drysdale. "I thought old Murdock would have wept on his neck. As it was, he scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... single encounter with Toddie had taught me to respect the young gentleman's force of character. So again I bowed my head, and repeated what Budge had reported as "papa's blessin'," Budge kindly prompting me where my memory failed. The moment I began, Toddie commenced to jabber rapidly and aloud, and the instant the "Amen" was pronounced he raised his head and ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... like to go to her to-night?—Well, go. I shan't need you. Don't jabber, you make my head spin. Go at once and stay until morning; leave the cigarettes on the tray and the wine on the table—that is all. Just ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... people among us. But to be a town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don't live—to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do you admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... have believed it of myself that I could see into it as quick as I have. I couldn't say as I understand everything they say just when they're saying it; but I understand it right enough when I've had time to translate like. If foreigners didn't talk so fast and run their words one into another, and jabber as if their mouths was full of puddin', it'd be easier for them as is English. Now, there's 'wee' and 'nong.' I know 'em whenever I hear 'em, and that's a good bit ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... keeps step with the spirit; and actuality forestalls, in a way, the selection by memory; significance, pleasantness, choice, not brute outer circumstance, determining the accentuation, the phrasing (in musical sense) of our life. For life must be phrased, lest it become mere jabber, without pleasure or lesson. Indeed, one may say that if games teach a man to stand a reverse or snatch an opportunity, so bicycling might afford an instructive analogy of what things to notice, to talk about and remember on life's high-roads ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
