"Chatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not listening to the idle chatter of his daughter. He ate in silence, his brow corrugated with the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the family, as the Ericsons say when they divide up little Hilda's patrimony amongst them. Besides, we'll give them something to talk about when we hit the trail. Lord, it will be a godsend to them! They haven't had anything so interesting to chatter about since the grasshopper year. It'll give them a new lease of life. And Olaf won't lose the Bohemian vote, either. They'll have the laugh on him so that they'll vote two apiece. They'll send him to Congress. They'll never forget his barn party, or us. They'll always remember ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... academic interest for herself. And not only so, but that it was after all, a more systematic and particular method of examining just the same questions that underlay the discussions of the Fabian Society, the talk of the West Central Arts Club, the chatter of the studios and the deep, the bottomless discussions of the simple-life homes. It was the same Bios whose nature and drift and ways and methods and aspects engaged them all. And she, she in her own person too, was this eternal Bios, beginning again its recurrent ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... a faint, unhappy, bitter smile, but he said nothing. He seemed far off from her. A wild unhappiness beat inside her breast. She went down the corridor, away from him, to avoid this new agony, which after all was not her agony. She listened to the chatter of French and Italian in the corridor. She felt the excitement and terror of France, inside the railway carriage: and outside she saw white oxen slowly ploughing, beneath the lingering yellow poplars of the sub-Alps, she saw ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Rays',—there she stood, gazing up the Platte toward the Indian village through a pair of signal glasses that weighed heavily in her daintily gloved hands. Captain Tracy, a bachelor assistant surgeon, stood faithfully by her side, listening to her lively chatter, with ears that absorbed and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... prisoners at exercise, stamping the flagged pavement to keep their starved blood in circulation. At a sight of the Commandant with his two visitors—so small a spectacle had power to divert them— all this movement, this stamping, was hushed suddenly. Voices broke into chatter; faces appeared between ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after this was done, Enoch and Diana sat before the tiny eye of fire, listening to the subdued chatter with which Jonas and Na-che ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... come in. Do you remember that morning? You were the first ring-tail monkey that I had seen since I left the Zoo, and you looked so much like my twin brother, who used to swing with me in the tangled vines of my native forests, and pelt me with cocoanut-shells, and chatter to me all day long under those hot, bright skies, that I wanted to put my arms around you and hug you; but the looking-glass was between us. Some day I shall break that glass, and crawl back behind there ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... converse, confer, confabulate, consult; babble, prattle, prate, chatter, gabble, gibber, blather; expatiate, descant, comment, harp, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of a ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... the conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an almost unbroken chatter. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed pigeons dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts. The lazy blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... conversion. That "conversion" is a phenomenon of adolescence is now settled beyond all reasonable doubt. Statistics are conclusive on this point. But the advocate of revivalism quite misses the true significance of the fact. Current religious literature is full of quite meaningless chatter concerning the change of view, the larger and more unselfish activities, that arise as a consequence of conversion. There is really no evidence that the changes indicated have any connection with conversion. All that does happen can be more simply and more adequately explained ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... parlor, holding his beloved namesake on his knee, watching her blissfully suck a barley stick while he waved his palmleaf fan. Dora would be fitting gowns in the next room. He would hear the hum of feminine chatter over strictly feminine topics. He felt very much aloof, even while holding the little girl on his knee. Daniel had never married—had never even h ad a sweetheart. The marriageable women he had seen had not been of the type to attract a dreamer like Daniel Wise. Many of those women ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said Denis, laughing, and quite taken by the friendly chatter of his new acquaintance. "One wants to grow up, of course; but I don't know that I ever felt ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... engaged fifteen or twenty minutes, drilling and carrying out chips, it ascends to an upper limb, utters a loud call or two, when its mate soon appears, and, alighting near it on the branch, the pair chatter and caress a moment, then the fresh one enters the cavity ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... back to farms and clearings and villages, far away in the Eastern States, where sweethearts, mothers, wives, and sisters ofttimes waited and waited for news of a wanderer, lured far away by the glint of silver and gold. The notes of birds, the chatter of brooks, the tinkle of cow-bells came again, with the ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... men around him, the sound of their chatter, convinced him that he need not try German or Hollandsch here. He fell back on ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all elation from the youth's veins. He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life. He took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... not their business, and they could know nothing; and that nothing would displease her ladyship more than chattering on such subjects, and many's the match as good as finished, that's gone off by no worse means than the chitter-chatter of those who should hold their tongues. Therefore she should say no more; but if her ladyship wished her to contradict it, why she could, and the sooner, perhaps, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... her with the men of the party, and wondered at their good-natured endurance of her sharpness, as reckless as it was disturbing; and he saw that her inclusion among the women made them less at ease and disinclined to chatter. No matter what group she joined, she was never of it; and even when it was obvious that she was doing everything in her power to reduce her personality to the pitch of the others, her individuality branded ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... that which they needed. But one effect the incident had; it somehow seemed to draw me more to Cynthia. There followed a time of very close companionship with her. She sought me out, she began to confide in me, chattering about her happiness and her delight in her surroundings, as a child might chatter, and half chiding me, in a tender and pretty way, for not being more at ease in the place. "You always seem to me," she said, "as if you were only staying here, while I feel as if I could live here for ever. Of course you are very kind and patient about it all, but you are not at home—and I don't ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... constraint. She therefore rebelled against the idea of another master. She was very gentle but determined, and this determination of hers ended sometimes in the most violent anger. She used then to turn very pale, and violet rings would come round her eyes, her lips would tremble, her teeth chatter, her beautiful eyes take a fixed gaze, the words would come at intervals from her throat, all chopped up—hissing and hoarse. After this she would faint; and the veins of her throat would swell, and her hands and feet turned icy cold. Sometimes she would be unconscious for hours, and the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... delight as I stepped swiftly along toward home—and Nina! I was aware of a great weakness in my limbs—my eyes and head ached with the strong dazzling light; occasionally, too, an icy shiver ran through me that made my teeth chatter. But I recognized these symptoms as the after effects of my so nearly fatal illness, and I paid no heed to them. A few weeks' rest under my wife's loving care, and I knew I should be as well as ever. I stepped on bravely. For some time ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... me, though, was his line of chatter. All about some 'map, old French,' and a lot of stuff ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... went on in her blithe chatter. "I half wished for a boy, as Captain Rothesay thought it would please his uncle; but that's of no consequence. He will be quite satisfied with a girl, and so am I. Of course she will be a beauty, my dear little baby!" And with a deeper mother-love piercing through ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... standing at the door, the presence of the commissioner Mutel, the chatter of the previous evening, had naturally roused everybody's imagination. But this excitement had to be kept for home use: the whole street was under arrest, and its inhabitants were forbidden to leave their houses. The windows, crammed with anxious faces, questioning each other, in the expectation ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the cold, so long as he has good and serviceable skin clothing. Let the same man, rigged out in civilized clothes, be suddenly put down in the streets of Christiania on a winter day, with thirty or thirty-five degrees of frost, and the poor fellow's teeth will chatter till they fall out of his mouth. The fact is, that on a Polar trip one defends oneself effectively against the cold; when one comes back, and has to go about with the protection afforded by an overcoat, a stiff collar, and a hard hat — well, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... chatter of the keeper as he holds my second gun, and pays me that attention which can only be wiped off by tips! I can hear the sound of the first shot, and decipher the meaning of the initial ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... know you are a busy man, Mr Gulching, so I mustn't keep you listening to a woman's chatter any more. I'm afraid I haven't explained things very deeply, but then you men are such creatures for wanting to get to the root of the matter, aren't they, Mrs Gulching? However, Mr Inglethwaite will call shortly and discuss things with you. I know he wants your advice. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... each bearing on the head a great graceful basket of yellow treasures. Opposite our window there is a wall by which they rest themselves, after their three-mile walk from the gardens. There they lounge and there they chatter. Little boys come slyly to pilfer oranges, and are pelted away with other oranges; for a single orange has here no more appreciable value than a single apple in our farmers' orchards; and, indeed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all questions of his after her waking. The command thus given had a persistent effect, and while the awakened Lucie continued to chatter as usual with other persons, her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which, in many cases, a new and invading separate personality ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... was fast becoming the stumbling-block of governments and the most powerful lever of revolutionaries. The chief of the peace armies resided in sumptuous hotels, furnished luxuriously in dubious taste, flooded after sundown with dazzling light, and filled by day with the buzz of idle chatter, the shuffling of feet, the banging of doors, and the ringing of bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates when their day's toil was over and time had to be killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious deliberation and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl. "Fate's a ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... an open-air existence. Most of her daylight hours were spent, either rolling on the rough lawn, or sleeping in a hammock swung beneath an apple tree, and as a result, night-tide found her a very drowsy baby indeed. The children might romp and sing and chatter around her very cot as she slept, but she could not steal out of her slumbers even to blink a golden ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... woman was bewildered, and sought to escape the uncanny compliments of the cavalier. She was delighted to see Beautiful Sara appear at this instant, as it gave her an opportunity to inquire whether she had quite recovered from her swoon. Thereupon she plunged into lively chatter, in which she fully developed her sham gentility, mingled with real kindness of heart, and related with more prolixity than discretion the awful story of how she herself had almost fainted with horror when she, as innocent and inexperienced as could be, arrived in a canal boat at Amsterdam, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of her friend all the way to Camden Town, but the information he gathered did not serve to advance Hilliard in his understanding of Eve's character. That she was keeping back something of grave import the girl had already confessed, and in her chatter she frequently checked herself on the verge of an indiscretion. Hilliard took for granted that the mystery had to do with the man he had seen at Earl's Court. If Eve actually disappeared, he would ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... in particular, it was exciting, ravishing, and the time flew by so unheeded that presently there came a sharp knock and an impatient voice cried, "Chatter! chatter! chatter! How long are we to be kept waiting for dinner, all ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... women sinking affectedly or plumping in matter-of-fact style down into their places, with languishing upward looks if they be young and in tune with the moon outside, with red faced jollity and much frankness of chatter if they were married and perhaps had a husband and children likewise disporting themselves, made long rows about the walls of the schoolhouse, looking for the world like orderly flocks of bright plumaged birds in their bravery of many hued calicos and ginghams; a gay display of bold reds and ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... can't be helped now. She will never be such a goose as to stay there long." And he felt more sorry thinking of how the string would be lying slack until his return than for treating Hetty so inconsiderately. Trying to put the whole thing out of his head he began to chatter to his father about something that had happened at school, and thought no more about the matter till he had returned home ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... the world's birth-throes. It is the center of a region rich in native lore and legend, as it sleeps through the dusty noons when the cacao leaves droop with the heat and dreams through the silvery nights, waking twice or thrice a week to the endless babble and ceaseless chatter of an Oriental market where the noisy throngs make of their trading as much a matter of pleasure and recreation ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... mould, And we who're growing old, Wish they would wash, like other folk, elsewhere; It makes us feel quite cold To think of them refrigerating there; We shiver in our beds; Our pitying molars chatter in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... Joan." "Polly. Why, how now, Madam Flirt? If you thus must chatter, And are for flinging dirt, Let's try who best can spatter, Madam Flirt! "Lucy. Why, how now, saucy jade? Sure the wench is tipsy! How can you see me made The scoff of such a gipsy? [To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... will have such comfort as that for some time to come; but we may be able to make your teeth chatter in a few days," Neal replied laughingly, and then as the breeze caused by the movement of the yacht over the water fanned his face, he added sleepily, "Good night; I don't believe I shall open my ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... sensibility of these politic amateurs when we overhear their chatter about patriotic art and catch them, as we caught them lately, attempting to ban German music. "Give us patriotic art," they cry. As if art could be patriotic or unpatriotic! One might as well cry for patriotic mathematics. The essence of art is that it provokes a peculiar emotion, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... intelligence. At any rate, without being stupidly tongue-tied, he knew enough to remain silent when there was nothing to say, and that was a blessing, for Mrs. Austin herself was not talkative, and idle chatter distressed her. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... so very differently from what he had expected that Durnovo was a little off his balance. Things were so sociable and pleasant in comparison with the habitual loneliness of his life. The fire crackled so cheerily, the moon shone down on the river so grandly, the subdued chatter of the boatmen imparted such a feeling of safety and comfort to the scene, that he gave way to that impulse of expansiveness which ever ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... weep, but just stood cowering, a chill of anguished horror racking her. All at once her teeth began to chatter, her body to shake ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... led the Englishman, who nodded whenever the voluble chatter of the German pleased him. When they began the descent of the hill, the vista which opened before them drew from the Englishman an ejaculation of delight. There lay the lake, like a bright new coin in a green purse; the light of the sun broke on the white buildings and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... many girls there be, Who without thinking talk like she, And parrot like they ever chatter, When they should think ...
— Spring Blossoms • Anonymous
... about him—a wall of red bodies, whose pointed heads were craned forward, while an excited chatter in their broken, whistling speech filled the room with shrill clamor. Then one of them pointed above toward the open shaft that Rawson had drilled, the shaft up which the bailer had gone. And again their voices ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... and Trent listened an instant to the animated chatter around him, broken by ripples of laughter from the girls or the mellow chuckle of Fallowby. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... the working-classes. He was essentially a man's man. To women his attitude was reverential, but he was shy and embarrassed in young feminine society. He used to say apologetically, "I have no small talk," and from the vacuity of the average drawing-room chatter ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... "Stop this chatter!" cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the collar. "Tell me how you know this, and how much ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... intensively interrogated these prisoners," boomed the announcer, "and know there is nothing more to the rumored anti-social plot than this stupid chatter. Remain vigilant and you ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... believed to be due to its connection with his tutor, and the rest he set down to the score of his own humanity, and took credit to himself accordingly; whereas in truth Monsieur Crapaud was of incalculable service to his new master, who would lie and chatter to him for hours, and almost forget his present discomfort in recalling past happiness, as he described the chateau, the gardens, the burly tutor, and beautiful Madame, or laughed over his childish remembrances of the toad's teeth in Claude ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... speakers say: "I've met un, ever so laate, stalkin' aloong like th' devil. Tes aw token o' a bad conscience. Tes dreadful to think about. I got owt o' his way.... I'd as soon speak to th' devil. Iss, aw'd." Charles had thought nothing of this chatter at the time, but he wondered now if they were talking of Thalassa. Did the local fisherfolk believe that he had something to do with the murder, and shunned him like Ishmael ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... a great deal of pow-wowing and chatter, charges and refutations, excuses and explanations. Mr. Medcroft finally waved every one aside in the most ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... goat," he said resignedly. "I had figured to sick you on to Peewee Simpson to-day, but he ain't around, so I'll spill some chatter about ringin' a hoss among the society bunch one time, 'n' then I'll buy ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... the wife, 'and I am so full of distress and uneasiness that my teeth chatter, and I feel as if there were a fire in my veins,' and she tore open her dress; and all the while little Marleen sat in the corner and wept, and the plate on her knees was wet ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... from the foolish chatter. Matters of a deep and sinister nature occupied his mind. He felt within him wars and rumors of wars. He wished that the curtains would stop swinging out from the wall in that silly fashion. It was deuced uncanny to see them hang at an angle of twenty-five degrees, then slowly ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... origin was social; from the "Social Anthropoids,"—says Professor Huxley; and to omit the continuance of this social fact and law in sociology is worse than talking pre-Copernican astronomy. That should be left to our metaphysical anarchists, who chatter as if man was a solitarily created "Adam," defying the social "compact" of Rousseau, or dickering as to the terms upon which ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... mind to the complexities of the War. This last, a character-study of very moving and sympathetic realism, suffers a little from a defect inherent in one of Mr. MARSHALL'S best qualities, his gift for absolutely natural dialogue. The danger of this is that, as here in the bedroom chatter of the Squire's daughters, his folk are apt to repeat themselves, as talk does in nature, but should not (I suppose) in art. Still this is a small defect in a book that is sincere in quality and convincingly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... collect. With this he flies away to the mouth of the hole where they have established their home, and calls to her so tenderly, offering her the delicacy he has brought. He seems to call to her sometimes, simply to inquire how she is, and to soothe her labors with his incessant chatter. Seldom does he venture far from the nest, and if any danger threatens he instantly flies back to ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... have his convictions upset by looking at ancient cloths daubed over with linseed oil, nor by the bum-ta-ra of music. But, to my mind, in a country like Spain, it is better that our young men should be dissatisfied than that they should go to the laboratory every day in immaculate blouses, chatter like proper young gentlemen about El Greco, Cezanne and the Ninth Symphony, and never have the brains to protest about anything. Back of all this correctness may be ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... adopted, in the presentation of these myths and legends in connection with the chatter and remarks of our little ones, while unusual, will, we trust, prove attractive and interesting. We have endeavored to make it a book for all classes. Here are some old myths in new settings, and here are some, we venture to think, that have never before been seen in English dress. These will interest ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... at other human beings. There they sit or stand or hang. Some chatter, others scowl, fret, fume, complain, brag, grin or otherwise express the strange emotions that ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... palms. His Greek nature and his personal cowardice were unable to endure such sights. His face grew pale, his forehead was dotted with drops of sweat, his lips were blue, his eyes turned in, his teeth began to chatter, and a trembling seized his body. At the end of the battle he recovered somewhat; but when they attacked him with tongues, sudden anger seized him, and he ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... he felt bitterly bereaved. "How ironic life is," he thought. Then a snatch of French chatter and a gay laugh reached him. The gangway lifted, water widened between the bulwarks and the dock. As the ship swung out he caught the sea breeze—a flight of gulls swept by—he ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... long and the summer evening warm. During the wait before the dancing began I must have dropped asleep in the dark corner of the piazza where I had installed myself, to smoke my cigar, away from the other men and their tiresome chatter of golf and racing. Through the open window groups of women could be seen in the ball-room, and the murmur of their conversation floated out, mingling with ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... discussed when Mr. Podger, the undertaker, arrived, a broad, cheerfully sorrowful, clean-shaven little man, accompanied by a melancholy-faced assistant. He conversed for a time with Johnson in the passage outside; the sense of his business stilled the rising waves of chatter and carried off everyone's attention in the wake of his heavy footsteps to the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... curious thing it was to watch that girl go in and out among the scoundrelly patrons of the Skull and Spectacles, listening to their devil's chatter in all the lingoes of earth, and yet in a kind of fashion keeping them at a distance. She would bandy jokes with them of the coarsest kind, and yet there was not a man of all the following who would dare to lay a rude hand on her or even to force a kiss from her against her ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... little glance at him from the corner of her eyes, but the moment she saw that he was embarrassed and at sea because of the query she instantly slipped into a fresh tide of careless chatter and covered up ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... got to be, Though they haven't referred the thing to me. There's a boat and we put our parcels in it, And off we push in another minute. And our pace is certainly rather slow, For everybody wants to row; And there's any amount of laugh and chatter, And crabs are caught, but it doesn't matter; For we're all afloat In an open boat, And the breeze is light and the sky is blue, And the sun is toasting us ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... in two and made a wet bandage for each of Jocko's knees, and then she could do no more, and sat down by him on the roadside to wait till the fog should clear up a little. Her teeth began to chatter with cold, and she felt ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare the two senses of ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... at night I must drink wine to keep out the cold. I come out like this." (He shivered violently, making his teeth chatter.) "Then I drink a glass and I am warm, and when they have taken the fish I go in again. We fish all along the shore from Isola Bella round by the point there, where there's the Casa delle Sirene, and to the caves beyond the ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... people might chatter and beckon as they would, his interest in them was gone. On the other hand, he had become completely absorbed in the personality of this other, once heart and centre of the gayest set in civilized society; now dwelling in the fastnesses of an isolation such ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Kentucky was a famous hunter named Daniel Boone. He was a gentle, kindly man who loved the forest and the loneliness of the wilderness. All the lore of the forest was his, he knew the haunts and habits of every living thing that moved within the woods. He could imitate the gobble of the turkey, or the chatter of a squirrel, and follow a trail better than any Indian. It was with no idea of helping to found a state, but rather from a wish to get far from the haunts of his fellowmen that he moved away into the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... to the landing, closing the door after me, with the idea of getting down the stairs and escaping into the garden as secretly as I had come in. I had crept down a very few stairs when I found this was not to be. A chatter of voices just below told me that people were in the tower, and leaning over I could see couples passing between the passage to the hall and the room ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... guarding us from persons not worthy of benefactions, who will make recommendations, seek into the affairs of those considered worthy. We shall, of course, expect to find room for you. It will not be a chatter-tea-drinking affair. You will have the evenings to yourself and all of Sundays. The salary will be two hundred ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... dismount, and go to the dressing-room. You are rather warm, but not in the least tired, and you have had "such a good time," as you enthusiastically explain to everybody who will listen to you, but as there is much merry chatter going on from behind screens, and as it is all to the same effect, nobody pays much attention, and if you were cross and complaining, everybody would laugh at you. A riding-school is a place from which every woman issues better ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... chatter seemed to pall on young Rembrandt. It is said that when a 'bus-driver has a holiday he always goes and rides with the man who is taking his place; but when Rembrandt had a holiday he went away from the studio, not towards ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... antics repeated in this mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of them who drowns his clamorous demand for charity, observes his angry counterpart in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, begins to wag his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised at this, awakens half-a- dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy brown cloaks, who are lying on the church-steps with pots and pans for sale. These, scrambling up, approach, and beg defiantly. 'I am hungry. Give ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... degradations? I am amazed the army gets so many capable recruits as it does. And while the private lives under these conditions, the would-be capable officer stifles amidst equally impossible surroundings. He must associate with the uneducated products of the public schools, and listen to their chatter about the "sports" that delight them, suffer social indignities from the "army woman," worry and waste money on needless clothes, and expect to end by being shamed or killed under some unfairly promoted incapable. Nothing illustrates the intellectual blankness of the British ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Callista had once felt the misery of maladies akin to yours. She had passed through doubt, anxiety, perplexity, despondency, passion; but now she was in peace. Now she feared the torture or the flame as little as the breeze which arose at nightfall, or the busy chatter of the grasshoppers at the noonday. Nay, rather, she did not think of torture and death at all, but was possessed by a peace which bore her up, as if bodily, on its mighty wings. For hours she remained on her knees, after Caecilius left her: then ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... not straight. Heedless of the chatter and excitement behind him Omar walked on before, his staff raised on a level with his eye, counting aloud each step he took, measuring the distance, until when he had taken a thousand paces he suddenly stopped, examined ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... good opinion of herself and contempt for the untutored rustic, she would herself the next day be delighted with the very same shaped bonnet if brought her by a French milliner and told it was all the fashion, and in a week's time will become quite familiar with the maid, and chatter with her (upon equal terms) about caps and ribbons and lace by the hour together. There is no difference between them but that of situation in the kitchen or in the parlour: let circumstances bring them together, and they fit like hand and glove. It is like mistress, like maid. Their talk, their ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... glittering eye, one a lean man in white, and another without any hair on the face and dressed in a different style. Could it be a woman? I don't know what to think. I wish you were here. After a lot of chatter Tengga said: "Six years ago I was ruler of a country and the Dutch drove me out. The country was small but nothing is too small for them to take. They pretended to give it back to my nephew—may he burn! I ran away or they would have killed me. I am nothing here—but I remember. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... "Percy told us he thought you were courting Mrs. Chester. That was pure impertinence on his part, and perhaps what father said at the table was impertinence too, but I know he said it because he thought there might be something in Percy's chatter, and that you ought to understand how things stood. Now, you may think it impertinence on my part if you choose, but it really does seem to me that you are very much interested in Mrs. Chester. Didn't you intend to walk down to the Holly Sprig when ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... works, uselessly they cannot speak: so they bind them to silence that they dare say no word save it be teaching others or praising GOD: and therefore, when they ask GOD aught, He grants it at once." But we, woful wretches, who deal with the world, that chatter all the day like magpies; now lie, now twist, now speak evil, now quarrel, now backbite, now swear great oaths, these defile our prayer and hinder it, that it is not heard; for our mouth is as far from praying GOD, as it is near the world with idle speech. Prayer is so mightful ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... and the chatter of many voices arose; but it soon died away before stern commands and equally stern preparations, because they were preparing to run as terrible a gantlet as human beings ever face, these dauntless pioneers of the wilderness. The children were quickly ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... did not care for the chatter and casual encounters of the public rooms of an hotel. It was her practice to retire to her own salon after dinner, unless she were going to a theatre. After the first two or three days of their acquaintance she had invited Bobby to join her there, and he had been ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... the multitude, gay with colour, noisy with chatter and mingled music, redolent with a hundred varieties of sensuous perfume. I came upon a dancing floor. Whirling and twisting about the columns, circling around a gorgeous scented and iridescent fountain, officers ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... and I were near the companion-hatch, that we might hold on tight to it. The scene was stirring in the extreme; rather more than was pleasant indeed. I did not like the state of things, and Toby's teeth began to chatter in his head. It was very dark. The wind roared through the rigging; the sails, extended to the utmost, would, I thought, burst from the bolt-ropes, or carry the stout mast out of the vessel. The lugger heeled over till the men at the guns were up to ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... up an incessant chatter. They talked over their situation, but could as yet decide upon nothing. It grew dark at length. The sun went down. The usual rapid ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... hangs, half-timidly, her bunch of tinselled flowers before the red lamp of the good little Madonna of this traghetto benedetto, whose gondoliers are the bravest in all Venice! Meanwhile the boatmen, coming, going, or waiting, keep up a lively chatter. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the protection of the greatest of armies, we have laboured at scientific, social, and economic progress; our enemies trusted to the rule of force and to chatter.—O.A.H. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... assent. The two fell briskly to work and soon made an impression on the blank iron wall. At first the American chatted of this and that, rehearsing his own aimless ramblings as men will, but presently he observed that Smith was painting away and paying no attention to his partner's chatter. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Ferrises gave me a beautiful dinner, and I wore evening dress for the first time in two years, and was as thrilled as a debutante at her first ball! It was so good to see cut glass and silver, and to hear dear silly worldly chatter that I grew terribly frivolous. Plates were laid for twenty, and who do you suppose was on my right? The severe young purser who was on the steamer I came over in! His ship is coaling in the harbour ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other end of the village; it was a tumult for calm Fort ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... day after leaving Malta, the steamer crept from under the Great Rock into the beautiful bay, and was promptly boarded by a few gentlemen of effusive manners who were greatly concerned about the health of Captain S——. The latter requested them to cease their chatter and to get ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... "I've done what I could, with Hilda there! Instead of going up to Hillport with Janet, she would stop here and chatter about strikes." ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... irrepressible faces. They have no ballast. They talk ceaselessly, and are very playful and witty, but though a large sum is being paid for their education at Malacca, they speak atrocious "pidjun," and never use Malayan, in my hearing at least. They are never still for one instant; they chatter, read snatches from books, ask questions about everything, but are too volatile to care for the answers, turn somersaults, lean over my shoulders as I write, bring me puzzles, and shriek and turn head over heels when I can't find them out, and jump on Mr. Maxwell's ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... into their business life; and I sometimes wondered whether the greater energy and rush that they apparently put into their conduct of affairs were not due to the necessity of making up time lost in superfluous chatter. If an Englishman has a mile to go to an appointment he will take his leisurely twenty minutes to do the distance, and then settle his business in two or three dozen sentences; an American is much more likely to devour the ground in five ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... time before Lizzie, well laden with parcels, returned from Whitecliffe, and the self-constituted nurses had plenty of time to make Eric's acquaintance. They found him a charming little fellow, full of quaint fancies and a delicate humour. His chatter amused them immensely, yet there was an element of pathos through it all; he looked so frail and delicate, like a fairy changeling, or some being of another world. They wondered if he would ever be able to ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... did not hear the 'some day.' She was already pouring into granny's ear all she had read, and granny interjected patiently, "Yes, dearie," and "Oh my!" and "How nice!" though she was so faint and weary she could not take in half of Mona's chatter. ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... which, Doris uses the powder-puff under her eyes a little and we adjourns to the Plutoria palm-room, where we had a perfectly good dinner, all the humility Westy could buy with a two-dollar tip, and no folksy chatter on ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... unfamiliar definition. Everyone sometimes uses "beauty" in an unaesthetic sense; most people habitually do so. To everyone, except perhaps here and there an occasional aesthete, the commonest sense of the word is unaesthetic. Of its grosser abuse, patent in our chatter about "beautiful huntin'" and "beautiful shootin'," I need not take account; it would be open to the precious to reply that they never do so abuse it. Besides, here there is no danger of confusion between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic use; but when we speak ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... secured the boat, and held out his arms for the sleeping bud that contained in its folded petals all their domestic hopes; and as the star-eyed young mother kissed it lightly and laid it in its father's arms, the happy pair walked away, leaving the echo of their gay musical chatter lingering on the air. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... ringing tones the adjutant ordered attention. The chatter and clamor instantly ceased. Briefly the young officer rattled off the details for the morrow, and ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... my dear," he had said to Gabriella, showing a minute later such gentle eagerness to return to a part of the newspaper which Gabriella had never read and did not understand, that his wife remarked pityingly: "Read your paper, Archibald, and don't let our chatter disturb you. There are a thousand things I want to say ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... dear Lady Penelope," answered Miss Digges, whose ready chatter we have already introduced to the reader, "he is a very handsome man, though his nose is too big, and his mouth too wide—but his teeth are like pearl—and he has such eyes!—especially when your ladyship spoke to him. I don't think you looked at his eyes—they ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... her very cordially, but, knowing their sentiments, that was rather an unfavourable omen, and Freddy and Lola, who had come down to see her, kept up such an incessant chatter, that there seemed no chance of obtaining ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... chatter under the poplars went on, but the boy with the chisel, lost in thought, his heavy brows bent into a bow, chipped and cut, forgetful of everything else. A half hour passed, and a long shadow fell across the marble. Michael looked up to see his patron, Lorenzo, standing beside him. ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... have sent you upon confidential missions you have been as dumb as an oyster. This new post I give to you because I know that you are a true patriotic Russian, and if you see and know certain things you will never chatter about them to the detriment of myself, or of our very good friend Grichka. To him, remember, everything is permitted. You will learn much, but rather than speak let your tongue be cut out. And that," he added, looking at me very seriously as he lowered his voice, "and ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux |
