"Jabbering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... French in battle?"—"Not a bit," said the other old lady, "dinna ye ken the Breetish aye say their prayers before ga'in into battle?" The other replied, "But canna the French say their prayers as weel?" The reply was most characteristic, "Hoot! jabbering ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... steamboat's whistle, and soon the Columbia, thrust forward by her powerful engines, could be seen bucking the flood of the Columbia and slowly churning her way up-stream. She landed opposite the wood-chute of the wood-yard, where a crowd of jabbering Chinamen gathered. Soon our party walked in that direction also, and so became acquainted with Carlson, the skipper of the boat, who agreed to take them down ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... welcomed; and under the plea of our being obliged to return to the ship early next morning, we soon took leave, and returned to the inn. As I was turning into the public room, the door was open, and I could see it full of blowsy-faced monsters, glimmering and jabbering, through the midst of hot brandy grog and gin twist; with poodle Benjamins, and greatcoats, and cloaks of all sorts and sizes, steaming on their pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... will fly from you as a hare to cover. I want you to be a belle, and you must help me.' I naturally asked her what I was to talk about, and she promptly replied 'Nothing. Study the American girl, they have the most brilliant way of jabbering meaningless recitativos of any tribe on the face of the earth. Every sentence is an epigram with the point left out. They are like the effervescent part of a bottle of soda-water.' This was while we were still in Wales, and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the court yard, set apart for the men. Its inmates were pacing it hurriedly; some jabbering to themselves; others with groups round them, to whom they addressed some quickly delivered jargon. With one or two exceptions, all noticed the entrance of the strangers; and some of them bowed to them, with mock gravity. One man, who wore an ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... heard a pattering of bare feet coming down the road. The stranger hailed in Hindustani, and the natives stopped and began an excited jabbering all together, which the stranger answered ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... all jabbering together, and they finally agreed to report to the king that the time had arrived when the princess should marry, so that she should be able to go away to a new land, amid other ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... corner of Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks from Tevkin's residence, a spot that usually swarmed with Yiddish-speaking real-estate speculators in those days. It was a gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, resembling the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. Hence the nickname "The Curb" by which that corner was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... spread through the house, opened the rooms, searched the cupboards and chests, and came at last, without having found anything, to the dormitories, where the Little Sisters' old nurselings were lying. Every head was upraised in astonishment and fear, and all, stammering and trembling, began jabbering out at once, "What are you doing here? You are not going to hurt the good Sisters? It's a shame! It's infamous! Go away! It's cowardly! My good monsieur, what will become of us if you take them away?" The old women were furious, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... a dignified mien, his braves were disposed to be gay. They were in high glee over their feat of capturing the palefaces, and kept up an incessant jabbering. One Indian, who walked directly behind Joe, continually prodded him with the stock of a rifle; and whenever Joe turned, the brawny redskin grinned as he grunted, "Ugh!" Joe observed that this huge savage ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... says Bertrand. "We'll finish the camel's humps off to-morrow. Time for by-by." Each one then slowly retires to rest, but the jabbering hardly pauses. Man takes all things easily when he is under no obligation to hurry. The men go to and fro, each with some object in his hand, and along the wall I watch Eudore's huge shadow gliding, as he passes in front of a candle with ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... knife through the arm; but he went up on to the poop; and as I followed, the Spaniards broke and threw down their arms—they saw 'twas no use, you see. When we reached the poop-stairs an officer in a blue coat came forward jabbering some jargon; but the captain would have no parley with him, but flung his dag clean into the man's face, and over he went backwards—with his damned high ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... money from the owners. The accatosi deserve mention on account of the cleverness with which they contrived to assume the appearance of captives recently escaped from slavery. Shaking the chains with which they said they had been bound, jabbering unintelligible words, telling heart-rending tales of their sufferings and privations, and showing the marks of blows which they had received, they went on their knees, begging for money that they might buy off their brethren or their friends, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... flashed to the fireplace, then to the corner where Clopin still sat with his jabbering parakeets, then flashed back to Cleek, and she laughed ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... three thousand dollars each. Although we would have committed any crime in order to possess these treasures, having got thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, we turned these rugs on their backs and pretended to find flaws in them, jeered at their colouring, and went on our way, followed by a jabbering, excited, perplexed, and nettled horde, who recklessly slaughtered their prices and almost tore up their mud floors in their wild anxiety to prove that they had something—anything—which we would ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... 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 into one boat, and pulled with us towards a point of land on the east side of the bay. The boat soon reached a small, rough pier, and then two of the men, jumping on shore, ran off towards the town, which stood a little way off from us. We sat, meantime, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quiet as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoning before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling and jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I lay ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... being unequal to the occasion, he sends off somewhere for a dusky Hindostani, who shortly arrives and, in obedience to orders, forthwith begins jabbering at me in his own tongue. Of this I, of course, know literally nothing, and, ever swayed by suspicion, it is easily perceivable that their first impression of my being a Russian spy is in a measure revived ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... away from Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... I don't want to wake her, I'm sure. I was up here just now, and couldn't make out a word she was jabbering." ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... your expense, and say that you don't mind your own business. We hadn't yet got rid of Hsiang Ling with all her rubbish, and here we have a chatterbox like you thrown on us! But what is it that that mouth of yours keeps on jabbering? What about the bathos of Tu Kung-pu; and the unadorned refinement of Wei Su-chou? What also about Wen Pa-ch'a's elegant diction; and Li I-shan's abstruseness? A pack of silly fools that you are! Do you in any ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... followed the tall Royal ahead, whose heels scraped against his breast buttons, and once or twice bruised him in the face; followed up, wondering what face of death would meet him at the top, where men were yelling and jabbering in three languages—French, English, and that tongue which belongs equally to men and brutes at ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... with a jabbering turmoil of negroes with muscular arms and brawny shoulders. All their shining black faces seem to be momentarily gashed open to show rows of white teeth, and were spotted with inlaid eyeballs. The sounds coming from them were a bewildering noise. They were hauling baggage about aimlessly. A large ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... stared at him in amazement, others passed on without taking any notice of him, thinking that he was drunk; one even said when he got home that he had met a Frenchman on the way who was jabbering away at something he did not understand. Nejdanov had common sense enough to know that what he was doing was unutterably stupid and absurd had he not got himself up to such a pitch of excitement that he was no longer able to discriminate between sense and nonsense. Pavel tried to quiet him, saying ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... that ever burst from an oppressed heart, and yet so soft, so uncomplaining, as if the sufferer found no fault with aught in the world but herself. Then Aditi's sounds were something like responses, rising as the internal sounds rose, and as they died away—a jabbering wail of an Eastern tongue. Aminadab, blunt though he was, and fonder of pork than poetry, and of scriptural quotations—which he had always at his tongue's end for conclaves of weavers—than impassioned sentiments, rising at the inspiring touch of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the wound and the operation, and how my father had come to find the bullet so unerringly, each theorist tapping his own chest and back, or his interlocutor's, sometimes a couple tapping each other with vigour, neither listening, both jabbering at full pitch of the voice with prodigious elisions of consonants and equally prodigious drawlings of the vowels. For us, the dressing of the wound kept us busy, and we paid little attention even when a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Lerwick a palpable increase of business and droves of business men. In the Grand Hotel there were, in August last, thirty gentlemen resident who were in some way brought thither by the traffic in herring—among the number a young Russian, who, with his wife, sat at a little table apart, and kept jabbering their language with glib expressiveness. His name was Walk-off, and his object was the annexation of fish for Muscovite consumption. He had a flabby face and long, dark hair, which he publicly combed. She was small and pretty—doll-like, indeed—with jewels in her ears, which ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... of the warriors the men set up a great jabbering. Their eyes were wide in astonishment—only, I presume, because of my strange garmenture, but as well from the fact that I came in company with a jalok, which is the Pellucidarian name ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... means a comforting state of affairs, and Guy's spirits were at their lowest ebb as the steamer finally faded into the horizon. He put up the glasses and strode forward. From the lower deck came a confused babel of sounds, a harsh jabbering of foreign languages that grated ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... and calm, were these; We tost upon no Indian seas; No savage chiefs, of various hue, Came jabbering in the bark canoe Our strength to dare, our course to turn; Yet boats a South Sea chief would burn[A], [Footnote A: In Caesar's Commentaries, mention is made of boats of this description, formed ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... surprised at their own parts? I once carried this philosophy to that degree that in a knot of country folks who had a library amongst them, and who, to the honour of their good sense, made me factotum in the business; one of our members, a little, wise-looking, squat, upright, jabbering body of a tailor, I advised him, instead of turning over the leaves, to bind the book on his back.—Johnnie took the hint; and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday, and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and, of course, another in returning, Bodkin was sure to lay his ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... lay down and closed his eyes, but there was no sleep for him this time. For the other trees had heard what he said and there came such a chattering and a jabbering and a rustling of leaves as had never been known in ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... the dispatch bag with my knees, and at the same time I vigorously swung my hips and freed myself from the man below. The detective struck the opposite wall of the compartment and bounced off toward the doorway, where he and the conductors stood jabbering and waving their arms and ever getting more and more purple ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... breeze ever whispers, with its colossal flowering trees, its green twilight, its inextricable involvement, its butterflies and moths, its brilliant but harsh voiced birds, its lizards and flying foxes, its infinite variety of monkeys, sitting, hanging by hands or tails, leaping, grimacing, jabbering, pelting each other with fruits; and its loathsome saurians, lying in wait on slimy banks under the mangroves. All this and far more the dawn revealed upon the Linggi river; but strange to say, through ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... politicians? prominent citizens?) wouldn't simply appropriate them for themselves. Paul Meillard was worried about that; everybody else was willing to let matters take their course. Before they were off the ground in their vehicles, a violent dispute had begun, with a bedlam of jabbering and shrieking. By the time they were landing at the camp, the big laminated leather horn ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... silence breaks, And bawling "Pit full!" gives the check he takes; Yet onward still the gathering numbers cram, Contending crowders shout rise frequent damn, And all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue, for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down. Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and handsome features that had been so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... acknowledged that violent symptoms of "log-rolling" began to be exhibited. There were fifty, if not eighty-seven young men who wished to be captain, and sit at the head of the table in the after cabin. Some of them went down into the steerage, and in five minutes there was a confused jabbering in ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... thinly clad, and they must inevitably suffer in frosty mornings and evenings and on the raw, cold, rainy days that are frequent in the autumn months in this latitude; yet they go about their work singing, shouting, and jabbering as merrily as a party of comfortably clad school children at play. How any of them avoid colds, rheumatism, and a dozen other diseases is a mystery; and yet it is rarely that one of them is ill ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... Pedolsky opened the pouch on his belt and took out the false palate and tongue-clicker without which no Terran could do more than mouth a crude and barely comprehensible pidgin-Ullran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned and began jabbering orders. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could fancy the Mounseers formidable ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... frequently bounded across the road, and it was said at no great distance elephants and wild boars were to be found. Birds of all sizes, some of the most gorgeous plumage, flashed here and there in the sunlight. Monkeys and baboons appeared scrambling among the rocks, or leaping from tree to tree, jabbering at the ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... a black-eyed, curly-headed little creature, who called him papa, and climbed on his knee, nestled under his coat, rifled his pockets, and woke him every morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and jabbering unintelligible dialects in ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the others, and stood with them upon the deck of the Salvador. The sailors that steadied El Nacional shoved her off. The jabbering Caribs hauled away at the rigging; the sloop headed for ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... lonesome, and if anybody does come in it's too damn sociable. And if you try to stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian begins singing in the next compartment, or the conductor keeps butting in and jabbering ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... long tramp that morning and there was much to talk about and the conversation was all in Chinese, according to the bargain. Dr. Campbell was ahead, and after an hour's talk he suddenly turned upon his companion: "Mackay!" he exclaimed, "this jabbering in Chinese is ridiculous, and two Scotchmen should have more sense; let us return to our mother tongue." Which advice Mackay ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... Consequently, I was ready before the Dalziels, but waited for them outside the door of their suite, almost dazedly watching people—men and women, half clothed—dashing out of their rooms toward the stairs and elevators. Some of these were jabbering to each other, but nobody seemed to know what had happened. They were merely wondering, as we were; and in the big hall, where some of the lights had been switched on, we could glean no further details. Several of the hotel employes had arrived on the scene, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... their lives probably, some strings of blue, red, and green glass beads. They had two rough pots, made of bark, in the boat, which they also sold, after which they reluctantly departed, quite naked but very happy, shouting and jabbering away in the most inarticulate language imaginable. It was with great difficulty we could make them let go the rope, when we went ahead, and I was quite afraid they would be upset. They were all fat and healthy-looking, and, though not handsome, their appearance was by no means repulsive; the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... oracle in it, who speaks with an air of authority. He is a great talker, and a great smoker, and he chats so skilfully, that he enjoys his pipe at the same time, and manages it so as not to interrupt his jabbering. He can smoke, talk, and row at once. He don't smoke fast, for that puts his pipe out by consuming his tobacco; nor row fast, for ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... found that no one ever came in to take even a cursory glance at the patients. I got up in the darkness and went to the door. To my astonishment I found it to be locked! I turned to one cot. It contained a French invalid who was jabbering away excitedly to himself, but I could not understand a single word. I turned to the next bed and its occupant was half-delirious. With such depressing company around me I tumbled back into bed and went off to sleep again somehow. In the morning I learned that there were ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... again. Of course I focus my mind on America, not on France! You can't expect me to go jabbering French when I think of the times my friends will be having to-day on the other side of the Atlantic. I've had rather a brain throb though. We'll dress up after dinner in anything we can borrow, and have a parade on the tennis lawn, with ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... tall, quiet, slow moving man arose, aimed his tobacco juice at a small tree, drawled out the words, "All right, Jedge," and departed, trailed by a half dozen jabbering keskydees, to whom he paid not ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... vigorous remonstrance, and wait uncomplainingly for their pay until the middle of next year. About five o'clock I arrive at Hadji Agha, a large village forty miles from Tabreez; here, as soon as it is ascertained that I intend remaining over night, I am actually beset by rival khan-jees, who commence jabbering and gesticulating about the merits of their respective establishments, like hotel-runners in the United States; of course they are several degrees less rude and boisterous, and more considerate of one's personal inclinations ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... put up their fiddles and the children went home; fairies and shepherdesses and pages and princesses all jabbering gleefully about the splendid time they ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... her is to be photographed widely. Wasn't it Adam Smith who said that conscience was only the reflection in ourselves of our neighbours' opinions? If we didn't value their opinions there would be no morality. Foreign travel makes you feel there is something in the idea. Who cares what a parcel of jabbering strangers think about his actions? The moment you lose touch with your environment, the moment you cease to vibrate to its nuances, your morality is in a parlous condition. Better go home and sit down on the well-known couch of Catullus, and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... maliciously; "he's got something a whole lot better to attend to than just jabbering with his two chums over the lines of a projected ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... friend you like," he said, brutally, "so long as you don't come jabbering nonsense here. I don't know you, and ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Screaming and jabbering, the Negroes and Negresses thrust each other's boats about, scramble from one to the other with gestures of wrath and defiance, and seemed at every moment about to fall to fisticuffs and to upset themselves ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... you villain, haud your jabbering; none of your romance or refinement till me. I have but one question to ask you—but one question—and then I have done with you for ever, for ever; therefore think before you answer:—Will you marry the lady, or will ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... about noon, and this important station, where they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of the journey. It certainly was a busy place—full of jabbering Mexicans, stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness, with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to find; but the kindly brakeman who had been attentive ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... enough from these others, all right. Even from Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself....I'd rather you'd stayed discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've suffered from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're jabbering away about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention to you as they do to me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as they say. There isn't, one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the rebels were camped by a little brook which ran through the valley. As he slowly advanced, the light became brighter, until presently a blazing camp-fire burst upon his eyes. Around this the slashers were ringed, jabbering and quarrelling in an excited manner. What they were saying Dane could not tell, but as he crept nearer, moving from tree to tree, he saw a human body lying in the snow a short distance from the fire. That it was one of the slashers he felt certain, and the explanation of the shot he had heard. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... babu abandoned argument, realising that further resistance were futile. And in a twinkling his dignity, his Urdu and his cloak of mystery, were discarded, and he was merely an over-educated and over-fed Bengali, jabbering babu-English. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the party as they passed her, jabbering to the guards who paid no attention to her. The prisoners had an opportunity to observe her closely as she followed at their side for a ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than a day or so in Sale. Every morning at breakfast some one was sure to turn up the paper and begin jabbering about the same old infernal business, Hood's cattle, and what a lot were taken, and whether they'll catch Starlight and the other men, and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... boatman and the Arab porters as they hauled huge trunks off the ship onto a float. Then one after the other the two tenders puffed away, packed from stem to stern. A few people for whom there was no room embarked in small boats manned by jabbering Arabs. Two of these cockle-shells still moved up and down under the black, mountainous side of the ship, and the officer whose duty it was to see the passengers off was visibly restless. He wanted to know if my lordship was ready; and my lordship's brain was straining after an ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... they're keeping the baby awake with all this jabbering," said Mr. Codge. "And that isn't good for babies, you know. They've got to have plenty of sleep. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Behind him half crouched the Japanese steward, evidently very much frightened. At the foot of the steps were grouped three rough looking men, foreigners and sailors without doubt, and partially intoxicated. The three men were an ugly lot, and they were all yelling and jabbering together in a foreign lingo. As the captain emerged from the passage to the open deck, he heard Pearson reply in ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... into this spot, with the whole of their bodies covered with long yellow hair. Moreover, he first took away from them the use of language, and of their tongues, made for dreadful perjury; he only allowed them to be able to complain with a harsh jabbering. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... day of life, too. Some twenty-four years before I had been born, but those years were simply existence. Now I was living. I had a secret. I had hinted at it to young Colonel. Had he stayed, I would have told him more, but like a fool he had gone jabbering off through the bushes, cutting a ludicrous figure, too, I thought, for his body had not yet grown up to his feet and ears, and he carried them off a bit clumsily. Had he stayed I might have told him all, and there never was a bit of news quite so important as that the foolish puppy missed; ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... right," said his companion; "the insolence of these gypsies is no longer to be borne. When I am at Merida or Badajoz I go to the mercado, and there in a corner stand the accursed gypsies jabbering to each other in a speech which I understand not. 'Gypsy gentleman,' say I to one of them, 'what will you have for that donkey?' 'I will have ten dollars for it, Caballero nacional,' says the gypsy; 'it is the best donkey in all Spain.' 'I ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... stepped across the threshold, Dorothea hesitated between stopping her ears and rubbing her eyes. The place was a Babel. Frenchmen in white paper caps and stained linen blouses were laughing, plying their brushes, mixing paints, shifting ladders, and jabbering all the while at the pitch of their voices. For a moment the din bewildered her; the ferment had no more meaning, no more method, than a schoolboy's game. But her eyes, passing over the chaos of paint-pots, brushes, and step-ladders, ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... when the latter conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in a house full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex—not even Briggs—when she began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and he could ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trying, Robert," Mrs. Wood said between her sobs; "I can't stay—I am so frightened. I am beginning to see things—and I know what it means. There are black things in every corner—trying to tell me something, grinning, jabbering things—that are waiting for me; I see them everywhere ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... came a third shot, smashing a second boat with fearful execution. Followed again a moment of awful silence, then among those Spanish pirates all was gibbering and jabbering and splashing of oars, as they attempted to pull in every direction at once. Some were for going ashore, others for heading straight to the vessel and there discovering what might be amiss. That something was very gravely amiss there could be no further doubt, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... "Hold your jabbering tongue," said the miller, turning round upon her fiercely. "Who asked you? I will see to it myself, Squire, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... in exactly the same words, although they didn't sound particularly cheerful over the job; and, instead of halting, one of them came on, holding a stick above his head. The others didn't seem very keen to follow him, but began jabbering away ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... wisdom! Everything is happiness for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... people with beards just like mine; sepulchral beings, who are always getting together and jabbering? ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... though some of our supplies must have been attractive to many of the poverty stricken men who crowded about us. On one occasion, an inn-employee, who was sent to exchange a bank-note for cash, did not return. There was much excited jabbering, but Mr. Laughlin firmly though kindly held the innkeeper responsible and that worthy admitted that he knew who had taken the money and refunded it. So all was peace. The innkeeper was probably in collusion with the thief. This was our only trouble of the kind, though we slept night after night in ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... in the western seas, And Indians galore, With jabbering parrots in the trees, And sharks ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... had compulsory education. The working classes were driving trade out of the country, and the consequence was, we couldn't build a boat which didn't reek like an oil-shop. Even the sailors on board were French—jabbering idiots; not an honest British Jack-tar among the lot of them; though the stewards were English, and very inferior Cockney English at that, with their off-hand ways, and their School Board airs and graces. She'd ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of merry laughter, seemed happier than millionaires or kings! Their dialect was a strange jumble of Dutch, English, and African. All were fond of talking, and, like aspiring politicians in happy New England, neglected no chance to display their extraordinary power of language. And such a jabbering, such a confusion of tongues, as I listened to that Sunday morning in the market-place of Demarara, overwhelmed me with wonder, and days elapsed before I could get the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... herself. But Gretel pretended not to hear her; and after all, she thought the oven not quite hot enough to push Gretel into, so she began jabbering about the witch's ride she was going to have that night at twelve, on her broomstick. As she thought about it she became very enthusiastic, and getting upon her broom she went galloping about the house and back. When she got through performing in this outrageous manner—which ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... expressions with violent motions and contortions, to make them understand her meaning. They understood it perfectly; for when they heard that she and her children were to leave them, they set up such a jabbering of lamentation as British ears never heard. We then formed a close circle round Agnes and the children, to the exclusion of the pongos that still followed behind, howling and lamenting; and that night we lodged in the camp of the Lockos, placing a triple guard round my family, of which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... universal use and power. In every human soul there lies an idea of heaven; dim and shadowy sometimes, bright and glorious at others; but yet everywhere present. The Arab wanderers, the wild men of the forest, the jabbering Ajetas, the South Sea Islanders, the wall-girt Chinamen, the sable Ethiopians, the cultured Christians, all cherish the thought of heaven—another home, a final resting-place from all that wearies or troubles. It seems as though God in goodness had implanted this thought in all creatures' minds ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... the yells of rage and terror which went up from the entire attacking band. The creature who had been hit fell to his knees the while he made agonized tearing movements at his face and uttered shrill, jabbering yelps. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... this part of the city is full of life; vociferous negroes and wrangling Gallegos, [Natives of Galicia, in Spain, who follow this occupation in Lisbon and Oporto, as well as at Para] the proprietors of the water-carts, are gathered about, jabbering continually, and taking their morning drams in dirty wineshops ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... And, jabbering excitedly now, both at once, the two old people began pouring their tale into his ears; told their boy's name,—"He was a gorboral alretty,"—and they were justly proud, and Davies made them happy by noting the name and company in his book ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... remnant of common-sense made him realize that he was treading upon dangerous ground and was upon the point of committing an unpardonable indiscretion. Fortunately, the Baron had paid no attention to his words; but Gerfaut was frightened at his friend's jabbering, and threw him a glance of the most threatening advice to be prudent. Marillac vaguely understood his mistake, and was half intimidated by this glance; he leaned before the notary and said to him, in a voice which he tried to make confidential, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... another Indian religious service—this time of Christians—and compared it with what I had seen in the morning? Instead of a money-hunting priest sitting beside a butcher's block and exacting a prescribed fee from each pushing, jabbering, suppliant of a bloodthirsty goddess, herself only one of the many jealous gods and goddesses to be favored and propitiated—instead of this there was a converted Indian minister who told his fellows of one God whose characteristic is love, and whose ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... The schoolteacherish woman began jabbering excitedly; she ran through about a paragraph of what was pure gobbledegook to Benson, before the man with the arrogant face and the jewelled zipper-pull ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... take those impressions in person to Mr. Horace Vanney, by the 10 A.M. train. Arriving at the station early, he was surprised at being held up momentarily by a line of guards engaged in blocking off a mob of wailing, jabbering women, many of whom had children in their arms, or at their skirts. He asked the ticket-agent, a big, pasty young man ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... coyote family scattered swiftly and left the feast. Cripp was as apt to howl in broad daylight as at night, and the sounds were meaningless, the unintelligible jargon of an idiot. Every coyote within hearing bristled with fear whenever Cripp's jabbering reached their ears. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... Lowder, of St. John, N. B. A little, black, dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill the schooner full, and make her a solid mass of black mineral. The master, Best, a likely young man; his mate a fellow jabbering in some strange gibberish, English I believe—or nearer that than anything else—but gushing out all together—whole sentences confounded into one long, unintelligible word. Irishmen shoveling the coal into the two Custom House tubs, to be craned out of the hold, and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... more delighted than I can tell, for he was indeed a very fine specimen. For a moment or two I stood with the group of natives, admiring him. He still breathed regularly, as his flanks heaved with each respiration; but as he lay absolutely still with all the men jabbering within a yard of him, I assumed that he was on the point of death and unable to rise. Possessed with this belief, I very foolishly allowed my curiosity to run away with my caution, and stepped round to have a look at his head. The moment I came into his view, however, he suddenly became possessed ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... Jack. "Of course, he didn't know me, and I hadn't a very good chance to introduce myself. He was jabbering with a lot of other Spaniards on a corner, with his caramba and his como esta usted, so that I didn't feel like going up to him with a yarn about a baby's shoe. Which way he went I don't know, for I had to get back ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... seats of the members was strewn with corks, broken glass, stale crusts, greasy pieces of paper, and picked bones. The hall was packed with negroes, smoking, chewing, jabbering, pushing, perspiring. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... 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 ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... all! There lay a heavy, clumsy, rusty, ugly flatboat with a great square box in the centre, while great cannon put their noses out at the sides, and in front. The decks were crowded with men, rough and dirty, jabbering and hastily eating their breakfast. That was the great Arkansas! God bless and protect her, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... tongues are heard in one loud din: The monkey-mimics rush discordant in; 'Twas chattering, grinning, mouthing, jabbering all, And noise and Norton, brangling and Breval,[322] Dennis and dissonance, and captious art, And snip-snap short, and interruption smart, 240 And demonstration thin, and theses thick, And major, minor, and ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... children, jabbering delightedly in their broken English, clambered upon four stools, and the widow sat upon another. And the Woggle-Bug, who was not hungry (being engaged in feasting his eyes upon the checks), laid down a silver dollar as a ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... enemy entering the city. They came on from Charles City in a long blue column resembling a serpent. Infantry and troopers, artillery and stragglers—all rushed toward the doomed city where they were met by a huge crowd of dirty and jabbering ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... pasts. I see before me many, like myself, who had the gift of creating exquisite, soul-stirring works of art and literature. But because we were not content to be mere mouthy clowns, with pen or brush, jabbering about the play of life, we have paid the penalty for thinking we could be both subject and painter, author and actor. Because we chose to live, we have failed. The world goes on applauding its successful charlatans, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... dark recesses of the woods we heard far away the jabbering cry of the ape-men. The Indians once more set up a ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cloak, and from Houston Street he turned into the Bowery. There was no elevated road at that time and the thundering, ear-splitting, overhead noises heard nowadays were not yet in existence. Still it was noisy, a perfect bedlam of jabbering foreigners, who crowded this busiest of busy streets as they crowded no other section of this cosmopolitan city. Von Barwig, usually so sensitive to noises, apparently did not notice this babel. Curiously enough his thoughts were miles away from New York, and the idea that he was going to sell ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... worse? Jack grasped the small, dripping body in his arms, and staggered to where the bell hung that summoned the attendant. He pealed it loudly, and sank down beneath it to wait. Other boys had arrived during the incident, and were now pressing round, questioning and jabbering. Jack had nothing to say to them. He was hard at work chafing the motionless form, and his brain was in a whirl. What if Toppin never ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... mystery of words themselves, put of which such an artist as this one was creates his spells and his sorcery. How, after tasting, drop by drop, that draught of "lingered sweetness long drawn-out" of his unequalled style, can we bear to fall back upon the jabbering and screeching, the howling and hissing, of the voices we have to listen to in common resort? Ah, child, child! Think carefully before you turn your candid-innocent eyes to the fatal entrance to these mysteries! It is better never to have known what ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... soliloquy, monologue; palaver, buncombe, blarney, blandishment, flattery, flummery; chaff, banter, raillery, persiflage, badinage, asteistn; chatter, babble, chit chat, gibberish, jargon, twaddle, fustian, moonshine, hanky-panky, jabbering, rhapsody, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... thousand yards of open ground would have meant a terrible loss, and the General did not attempt it. As it was, there was a great deal of banging and blazing, almost like the old Modder days, for a time; guns hard at it, and Mausers and Lee-Metfords jabbering away at a great rate, though, as both sides were under cover, the loss was not heavy. The firing went on till pitch dark, and we camped close under the ridge we had won. Next morning we found the ridge vacant, with only heaps of empty cartridge cans and an occasional blood-stain on the rocks ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect and give to the scene a genuine interest and a charm which it would always be pleasant to recall, even though ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up to the circle of frenzied dogs and excited men. The boys were all jabbering at once. Teague was beaming. R.C. sat his horse, and it struck me that he looked ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... their yellow skin showing through the clotted tufts of coarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, came plunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused masses along the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other and making insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. The hair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inky blackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, which ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thirty men; nearly three times as many as the Alert, which was afterwards on the coast, and was of the same size; yet the Alert would get under weigh and come-to in half the time, and get two anchors, while they were all talking at once—jabbering like a parcel of "Yahoos," and running about decks ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... enquired for the lodger. The servant answered him in French, which Alonzo did not understand: he replied in his own language, but found it was unintelligible to the servant. A grave middle aged gentleman then came to the door from within the room and ended their jabbering at each other: he, in the English language, desired Alonzo to walk in. It was an apartment, neatly furnished; no person was therein except the gentleman and servant before mentioned, and a person who sat writing in a corner of the room, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... Japs were organized, as soon as they felt there was going to be a row, they kept their eyes on the Russians all the time they were in the ring doing their pole balancing, and the little Jap up on the bamboo pole, with a fan, kept jabbering to the fellows down on the ground, and I could see that trouble was coming. When their act was over the Japs bowed to the audience, and started out where the Russians were lined up to come riding in. The big Russian said: "Look at the little monkeys," but he hadn't ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... got an Index too) travels to New York in the Steamer that brings you this. Quod faustum sit:—or indeed I do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care about an astonishingly small number of things as times turn with me! Man, all men seem radically dumb; jabbering mere jargons and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,— of them and of me, poor devils,—remaining shut, buried forever. If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... doing," he grumbled to himself. "Jabbering away, I'll be bound. Never was much of a hand at talking myself. Wonder who the deuce ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... approach to dudishness, or had not yet grasped it as anything that could possibly pertain to themselves, and these—mostly new importations from Poland or Italy—strode dauntlessly up to the wide-open doors in the deep Grecian portico, the men in clumping shoes and the women in little head shawls, jabbering ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Austrian did not understand Italian. It was Irene who translated the orders shouted at them by a brigandish- looking soldier, and they had to pull off in the direction of a smaller pier where Mrs. Haxton and Captain Stump had already disembarked in the midst of a crowd of jabbering natives. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... no head to this warning, but rushed on, jabbering in Welsh to himself, and groaning, ay, and even sobbing now ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... to hear him, Corporal M'Bean, jabbering away in that foreign talk, with that little black monkey moonshine. The little cratur a-twisting his shrivelled fingers about, that looks as if the bones were coming through the skin. I wonder what the good father ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... I did some! But Mrs. Crump was jabbering to him most of the time. Haven't you ever been out here before? Why, I thought you had!—How d' y' ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... in his hand. He came forward with a confidence which showed that he was accustomed to meet white men, and we recognised, as he approached, our former guide. He appeared to be highly pleased at seeing us, and began jabbering away in a language which neither Guy nor I could understand. Bracewell, who seemed to comprehend him, replied in the same lingo; and then told us that the black had informed him that his tribe was in the neighbourhood ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... the old man, grasping her hand. "But 'tis all one, Thankful: 'twas not for him I stopped you. There is a young spark with him,—ay, came even as you left, lass,—a likely young gallant; and he and the count are jabbering away in their own lingo, a kind ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... outside the bed-room door. The poor girl tried hard to communicate her tidings in such a whisper as would be inaudible to the parson; but this was impossible, for Barry only swore at her, and asked her "what the d—— she meant by jabbering there in that manner?" When, however, he did comprehend who his visitors were, and where they were, he gnashed his teeth and clenched his fist at the poor girl, in sign of his anger against her for having admitted so unwelcome a party; but he was ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... crowd on to the highest turn of the zigzag path, and bidden to go on. There were five hundred faces below him, putting out hot breath in the cool morning air. The sun was shooting over the cliffs a canopy as of smoke above their heads. On the top of the crag the sea-fowl were jabbering, and the white sea itself was climbing ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine |
