"Gibberish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Parris's house during the long winter evenings, telling witchcraft stories to the minister's niece, Elizabeth, nine years old. She draws a circle in the ashes on the hearth, burns a lock of hair, and mutters gibberish. They are incantations to call up the devil and his imps. The girls of the village gather in the old kitchen to hear Tituba's stories, and to mutter words that have no meaning. The girls are Abigail ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... hunting the Black Stone the interest of the problem had helped to keep me going. But now I could see no problem. My mind had nothing to work on but three words of gibberish on a sheet of paper and a mystery of which Sir Walter had been convinced, but to which he couldn't give a name. It was like the story I had read of Saint Teresa setting off at the age of ten with her small brother ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... which he deduced the conclusion that they had not been brought into very intimate contact with the crews of vessels speaking any of those languages. Their own language, on the other hand was, as of course might be expected, merely unintelligible gibberish to him. This was unfortunate, since it would make intelligent communication between him and them difficult, at all events for a time; sailors, however, have a way peculiar to themselves of making their requirements understood by foreigners, and he had little doubt of his ability to overcome ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the bushes. I've got the man tied back in the still room. I 'low he ain't no revenue but they 'low different. Come back and see if you kin make out his gibberish." ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Indian girl. And old Paloma was squatting at the girl's feet and rubbing the girl's knees and legs like for rheumatism, which I knew the girl didn't have from the way I'd sized up the walk of her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort of gibberish chant. And I let loose right there and then. As Sarah knows, I never could a-bear women around the house—young, unmarried women, I mean. But it was no go! Old Paloma sided with the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too. Also, she ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... a place of asylum, and frequented by sharpers, of whose gibberish there are several specimens in Shadwell's comedy, "The ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... got fairly to sea, very little thought was wasted on other matters. The captain of the vessel, said that there was "no sea on," or some such gibberish, and talked as if we were becalmed, at the very time that his tipsy old boat was bobbing about like a green rider on a trotting horse. It is a matter of indifference, what sort of metal encased the hearts of those who first tempted the fury of the seas, but they ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other). To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Gipsy man, 'Meg's true-bred; she's the last in the gang that will start; but she has some queer ways, and often cuts queer words.' With more of this gibberish, they continued the conversation, rendering it thus, even to each other, a dark, obscure dialect, eked out by significant nods and signs, but never expressing distinctly or in plain language the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... appeared frightened, and for some time said nothing, but only stared at me. At length, recovering herself, she exclaimed, in an angry tone, "Why do you talk to me in that manner, and in that gibberish? I don't understand ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... man by sailing a packet comes to alter his notions about men and things, or, for that matter, about women and things, too. I got into a category, in that schooner, that I never expect to see equalled; for I was driven ashore to windward in her, which is gibberish to you, my dear young lady, but which Mr. Powis will very well understand, though he may not be ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... he talk white man lingo to me, then, instead of his old gibberish that he can't possibly understand himself? Ask the old snoozer what's cooking in that pot. It smells ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... Robin Hood testily, "an ye make sport of me by pattering such gibberish, it will be ill for you all, I tell you. I have the best part of a mind to crack the heads of all four of you, and would do so, too, but for the sweet Malmsey ye have given me. Brother, pass the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... throw them off their guard. They would never expect that two white people could so speedily turn themselves into niggers. Of course we must pretend to be dumb: though we can talk first-rate nigger gibberish in the berth, it won't pass current, I fear, among ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the books you want, to the Arches; they will send them as soon as they can get them, but they do not seem quite familiar to [? with] their names. I have seen Gebor! Gebor aptly so denominated from Geborish, quasi Gibberish. But Gebor hath some lucid intervals. I remember darkly one beautiful simile veiled in uncouth phrases about the youngest daughter of the Ark. I shall have nothing to communicate, I fear, to the Anthology. You shall have some fragments of my play, if you desire them, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... have abundance of names for everything. It cometh, no doubt, from knowing Latin and other outlandish gibberish." ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... he thought: The Knight still repeated, She was an idle Baggage, and bid her go on. Ah Master, says the Gypsie, that roguish Leer of yours makes a pretty Woman's Heart ake; you ha'n't that Simper about the Mouth for Nothing—The uncouth Gibberish with which all this was uttered like the Darkness of an Oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the Money with her that he had crossed her Hand with, and got up again ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... slowly, almost invisibly forwards and upwards. Where the apex was today the second segment is tomorrow; what today can be understood only by the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... mean?" demanded the admiral, more concerned than he remembered ever before to have been, on any similar occasion. "One could wish to serve him as much as possible, but all this about 'nullus,' and 'whole blood,' and 'half,' is so much gibberish to me—can you make any thing ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not vulgar. He does not belong to the herd. Nothing real, nothing original, can be vulgar; but I should think an imitator of Cobbett a vulgar man. Emery's Yorkshireman is vulgar, because he is a Yorkshireman. It is the cant and gibberish, the cunning and low life of a particular district; it has 'a stamp exclusive and provincial.' He might 'gabble most brutishly' and yet not fall under the letter of the definition; but 'his speech bewrayeth him,' his dialect (like the jargon of a Bond Street lounger) is the damning circumstance. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Like "Neblaretai," an imitative or gibberish word expressing joyous excitement. Aristonumos. Sannurion. Two comic poets, the latter ridiculed by Aristophanes for ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... nothing," murmured Fritz. "I opened my ears as wide as possible, but it was all in vain. Is it not base and vile to come to Germany and speak this gibberish, not a word of which can be understood? In Germany men should be obliged to speak ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... may be of a kind to stimulate one person and to annihilate another. It is not a question of relative strength between character and circumstance, as people are so fond of asserting. That is mere gibberish. It means nothing. The two things cannot be compared, for they are not of the same nature. They can't be reduced to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... embraced the opportunity to see all the sights he could of the great metropolis. "He had a rum time of it in his sailor rig," said afterward one of his shipmates, "but hoisted in a wonderful deal of gibberish, according to his own ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... arose swiftly, and began folding his blankets. The other one, however,—the one who had wakened uttering gibberish— crossed his hands over his knees, and said: "I don't know ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... watched spellbound, they saw presently the old woman trudge along after her, still muttering the unintelligible gibberish, easily translatable into wrath and fury, whatever ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... absolute monotony, the island of Raza, off Rio Janeiro, was descried, and we slowly entered the harbor, passing a fort on our right hand, from which came a hail, in the Portuguese language, from a huge speaking-trumpet, and our officer of the deck answered back in gibberish, according to a well-understood custom of the place. Sugar-loaf Mountain, on the south of the entrance, is very remarkable and well named; is almost conical, with a slight lean. The man-of-war anchorage is ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the foremast in his language, and what d'ye think he said? Why, I'm blowed if he didn't call it a 'Mar-darty-marng' (and that's the only bit of French I know); but how is it possible to work a ship in such gibberish?" ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... return anon. If he be intoxicated, see he comes not near my chamber, and permit him not to enter into converse with any one. He raves when drink has touched his brain. He was a rare fellow before a Southron bill laid his brain pan bare; but since that time he talks gibberish whenever the cup has crossed his lips. Said the leech aught to ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Liancourt. He stalked up to her, and as Liancourt, seeing her rise, rose also and moved away, he said peevishly, "You will never learn to conduct yourself properly; you are to be left here to nurse and comfort your uncle, and not to listen to the gibberish of every French adventurer. Well, Heaven be praised, I have a son—girls are ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trouble in respect o' washin' and managin' has fell upo' me through the journey—I can't say but what I think as my Lady an' Sir Cristifer's done a right thing by a hinnicent child as doesn't know its right hand from its left, i' bringing it where it'll learn to speak summat better nor gibberish, and be brought up i' the true religion. For as for them furrin churches as Sir Cristifer is so unaccountable mad after, wi' pictures o' men an' women a-showing themselves just for all the world as God made 'em. I think, for ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the Arabian Geber, who, though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new-found art of making gold, in a word, on the philosopher's stone, has only descended to our times as the founder of that jargon which passes under the name of "gibberish." He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages, and allusions to "Geber's cooks," and "Geber's kitchen," are frequent among those who at length saw the error of their ways, after wasting their substance in the vain ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... news of the day, reading as he ate. Then he pushed the paper aside. The thought had just occurred to him that Rochester had paid that eight thousand not to shield a woman's name but to shield his own. To prevent that gibberish being read out against ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Oratorn vorzeiten haben gesagt in ihren Spruchen und Sentenzen, dasz die gedechtniss des Elends und Armuth vorlangst erlitten ist eine grosse Lust.' My friend, said Pantagruel, I have no skill in that gibberish of yours; therefore, if you would have us to understand you, speak to us in some other language. Then did ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... torn and dirty garments and curly hair, screamed and rolled about in the dirt. A red-haired Jew, with freckles all over his face which made him look like a sparrow's egg, gazed from a window. He addressed Yankel at once in his gibberish, and Yankel at once drove into a court-yard. Another Jew came along, halted, and entered into conversation. When Bulba finally emerged from beneath the bricks, he beheld three Jews ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... county fair near here!" exclaimed Rebecca. "But will ye listen to the gibberish an' see ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... swallowin' your meaning," Mazarine said at last. "I never studied Greek. If a woman has a disease, there it is, and you can deal with it or not; but if she hasn't no disease, then it's chicanyery— chicanyery. Doctors talk a lot of gibberish these here days. What I want to know is, has my wife got a disease? I haven't seen any signs. Is it Bright's, or cancer, or the lungs, or the liver, or the kidneys, or the heart, or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conversation with two of the crew—Manx sailors—about the Manx language; one, a very tall man, said he knew only a very little of it as he was born on the coast, but that his companion, who came from the interior, knew it well; said it was a mere gibberish. This I denied, and said it was an ancient language, and that it was like the Irish; his companion, a shorter man, in shirt sleeves, with a sharp, eager countenance, now opened his mouth and said I was right, and said that I was the only gentleman whom he ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... common sense and honest hearts, as things natural; that all that was necessary to this end, was first to separate from Christianity all that was not Christianity, and secondly, to translate Christianity out of Latin and Greek, Hebrew and Gibberish, into the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... came into her adorable eyes, the faint blush that suffused her cheek as she met his inquiring gaze, and the conscious, half conceited, half girlish toss of her little head as she turned her eyes away, and then a file of brown Chinamen, muttering some harsh, uncouth gibberish, interposed between them. This was followed by what seemed to be the crashing in of the church roof, a stifling heat succeeded by a long, deadly chill. But he knew that THIS last was all a dream, and ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... From the mixed gibberish of the voyageur, I could gather his meaning well enough. He knew of a depository of wax-candles, and the church of the rancheria was the place ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... great noise in May. They are loquacious throughout the year, especially on moonlight nights. Nor do they wait for the setting of the sun until they commence to pour forth what Eha terms a "torrent of squeak and chatter and gibberish." ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... once, mumbling to himself some inarticulate gibberish. Half an hour later, the servants came in and found him. He was seated in his chair, still doddering feebly. The house was roused. A doctor was summoned, and the Colonel put to bed. Lady Emily watched him with devoted care. But it was all in vain. The doctor shook his head the moment ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... shrill chatter of the apeman came to his ears. The red ape leader shuffled to his feet and looked from the earth people to the spot in the jungle whence came the chatter. Abruptly he opened his mouth and emitted a flood of gibberish sounds. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... "Hold your outlandish gibberish," returned his lordship. "Go and fetch me some whisky. This stuff is too cold to go to sleep on ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... laughed drily. "We know one another when we meet," he said. He drew his waxed thread between his finger and thumb, held it up to the light, then looked askance at the gossoons about him, to whom what he said was gibberish. They knew ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... he said, "to write under the dictation of a great merchant, conducting a vast correspondence by which thousands of pounds change hands in due course of post. And it's another thing to take down the gibberish of a maundering mad monster who ought to be kept in a cage. Your good father, Valeria, would never have asked ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... help a fellow-cratur to rise, instead o' talkin' gibberish like that, it would be more to your credit!" exclaimed the Irishman, as he scrambled to his feet and presented himself, along with Martin, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... it went. They sprawled about on the hatches, perched upon the rail, leaned in groups against the vent pipes; they covered the ship like a great brown blanket. They wrestled with each other, knocked each other about, shouted gibberish intended for French, talked about Kaiser Bill, and mixed ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble for this, because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to those who have 'died Ndembo.' . . . We hear of the custom far along on the upper river, as well as ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... him as a creature apart, and one whom many are prone erroneously to classify very low in the human scale and not far above the ape. Sir Lucien usually spoke to Sin Sin Wa in English, and the other replied in that weird jargon known as "pidgin." But the silly Sin Wa who murmured gibberish and the Sin Sin Wa who could converse upon many and curious subjects in his own language were two different beings—as Sir Lucien was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the one-eyed raven sank into ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... language strange and sweet Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed The village with the cheers of all their fleet,— Or, quarrelling together, laughed and railed Like foreign sailors landed in the street Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... you, Heiny, so long as I give you a bit of sugar now and then?" he said to his decrepit old guardian in his German gibberish. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... performances, and the crowd could not keep away from our cage, until pa got hot and unbuttoned his shirt and, before we knew it, everybody saw pa's white skin below where his face and neck were blacked, and while we were talking gibberish to each other a country jake got mad and he led a crowd to open the cage and make us remove our shirts to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... weary, as it should seem," saith Mother Alianora, again with her quiet smile. "Otherwise, to speak thereof should scarcely seem gibberish to her." ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... war to all the belligerents, whether few or many. More often than not, it is brought about by the exulting chatter of a few irrepressible and also irresponsible individuals who have military or political ambitions to look after, and no other faculty of reason or vocabulary than the gibberish "that war will clear the air." They ostentatiously claim a monopoly of patriotism; and convey their views on war matters with a blustering levity which is a marvel to the astonished soul. Their attitude towards human ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and cask, and placed in the stern of the boat. The crew were swarthy fellows with red caps, and Dick at once saw that the uniform worn by the officers in command was neither English nor French. They appeared to be talking gibberish, but such indeed were all foreign languages to him. He asked Charley if it was the ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... and we could find no broken bones. Apparently there was nothing the matter beyond fear, and of that he was nearly dead. He crawled to the Colonel and clung to his feet chattering an unintelligible gibberish. His eyes rolling wildly in the dim light, showed an uncanny yellow gleam. I could see where he got ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... off in a leisurely manner, evidently in no fear. They were the first we had seen, and Hector was all excitement. He spoke rapidly to the two Bushmen who were with us, and then shouted some clicking, unintelligible gibberish after the retreating animals. At the call the whole troop halted, and their hoarse barks came back in reply. Again Hector shouted, and once again the baboons voiced a grunting mocking answer that John and I looked at each other in amazement! ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... Such progress as Pin might make—if she were not already glued firm to her silly notions—would be in quite another direction. For the quarrel had made one thing plain to Laura: with regard to her troubles, she need not look to Pin for sympathy: if Pin talked such gibberish at the hint of putting off an inquisitive old woman, what would she—and not she alone—what would they all say to the tissue of lies Laura had spun round Mr. Shepherd, a holy man, a clergyman, and a personal friend of Mother's into the bargain? She could not blink the fact that, did it come to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... a-jumping on his shoulders, and swinging themselves to the ground by his long hair. Some was running hot irons into him, but when we came up they went off in a corner, laughing and talking like wildcats' gibberish ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... whisht! Or whisht yer blethers!—whichever way that outlandish, heathenish gibberish your forebears jabbered, would have it. You see, Archie, one great advantage of being Irish—and it's not your fault that you're not, man, I don't blame you—one great advantage is that you can speak all languages with equal ease. Now a Scotchman's tongue is like his sense of ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... possessed as much liberty as they could lay hands on between the Tower of London, into which they put orators, and the pillory, into which they put writers. Anne spoke a little Danish in her private chats with her husband, and a little French in her private chats with Bolingbroke. Wretched gibberish; but the height of English fashion, especially at court, was to talk French. There was never a bon mot but in French. Anne paid a deal of attention to her coins, especially to copper coins, which are the low and popular ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of what it is in the case of those who view the Indian at a distance and with no precise knowledge of any of his characteristics. In the estimation of such persons the Indian's vices greatly outweigh his virtues; his language is a gibberish, his methods of war cowardly, his ideas of religion ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... you are surprised. How do we know? The man Kirski has been twice examined—once in Venice, once this morning, when you went down to the Luisa; the reports the same. What! To have a maniac blundering about the gates, attracting every one's notice by his gibberish; then he is arrested with a pistol or a knife in his hand; he talks nonsense about some Madonna; he is frightened into a confession, and we become the laughing-stock of Europe! Impossible, impossible, my Calabressa: where were your wits? ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... understand your gibberish, my good man: but that you are unrefined and uneducated I can easily see, and I command you ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... burnt on me, his tales, Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around, Make captive any visitor and scream All sorts of stories of their keeper—he's Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat, Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same; Sane people soon see through the gibberish! I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere A life of shame—I can't distinguish more— Married or single—how, don't matter much: Shame which himself had caused—that point was clear, That fact confessed—that thing to hold and keep. Oh, and he added some ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and stultified—he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic and English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence of THE DOMESTIC INSTITUTION!" Admitting this to have been an extraordinary ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... part of the nose; and they all twist kangaroo teeth and the bones of fishes more or less in their hair. Every thing small and diminutive they call "Pickaninnie," and any thing very good, "Merri jig." Their language is a queer, rattling, hard-sounding gibberish, incomprehensible to most people; they speak as fast as possible, laugh immoderately at trifles, and are excellent mimics. Their own ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... broken. The Great Charter and the praters who appeal to it will be hanged in one rope. The good Talbot will shower commissions on his countrymen, and will cut the throats of the English. These verses, which were in no respect above the ordinary standard of street poetry, had for burden some gibberish which was said to have been used as a watchword by the insurgents of Ulster in 1641. The verses and the tune caught the fancy of the nation. From one end of England to the other all classes were constantly singing this idle rhyme. It was especially the delight of the English army. More ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... student days—and discovering a shabbily bright foreign quarter, shops displaying Hebrew placards and weird, unfamiliar commodities and a concourse of bright-eyed, eagle-nosed people talking some incomprehensible gibberish between the shops and the barrows. And soon I became quite familiar with the devious, vicious, dirtily-pleasant eroticism of Soho. I found those crowded streets a vast relief from the dull grey exterior ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Aunt Mary told Lucinda, when they were left together once more. "She puts me beyond all patience. She chatters gibberish that I can't make out a word of for an hour at a time, and then, all of a sudden, she screams, 'Dinner's ready,' or something equally silly, in a voice like a carvin' knife. It's enough to drive a sane person stark, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... neare me; Feele my pulse once again and tell me, Doctor, Tell me in tearmes that I may understand,— I doe not love your gibberish,—tell me honestly Where the Cause lies, and give a Remedy, And that with speed; or in despight of Art, Of Nature, you and all your heavenly motions, Ile recollect so much of life into me As shall give space to see you tortur'd. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... amongst the King's game; but by means of a sling, not of a bow; like the Hermit, too, he has his peculiar phrases of compotation, the sign and countersign being Passelodion and Berafriend. One can scarce conceive what humour our ancestors found in this species of gibberish; but "I warrant it proved ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... earnest, prays so heartily for himself, with such a sense of his own spiritual need and spiritual failings, that each one of his hearers feels as if a prayer and a supplication had gone up for each of them. Even Nattee muttered the few words she knew of the Lord's Prayer; gibberish though the disjointed nouns and verbs might be, the poor creature said them because she was stirred to unwonted reverence. As for Lois, she rose up comforted and strengthened, as no special prayers of Pastor Tappau had ever made her feel. But Faith was sobbing, sobbing ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... detailed reply in engineering terms was almost gibberish to Tom, but he understood enough of the unit construction to sense that Astro ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... style, detractors who could see nothing but nonsense in his matter. He will now have judges. Posterity will pronounce its calm and impartial decision; and that decision will, we firmly believe, place in the same rank with Galileo, and with Locke, the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science. Never was there a literary partnership so fortunate as that of Mr Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw material which Mr Bentham furnished was most precious; but it was unmarketable. He was, assuredly, at once a great logician and a great rhetorician. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... why the great scientist has endeavoured to speak like other people, preferring, to the harsh consonants of technical phrases which sound "like insults" or have the air of "a magical invocation, which make certain scientific works read like so much gibberish," the "naive and picturesque appellation, the familiar, trivial name, the popular, living term which directly interprets the exact signification of the habits of an insect, or informs us fully of its dominant characteristic, or which, at ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... gaunt with ruins. Horrors were there mingled with delicacies and confusion with idyllic peace. It was here a poet's childhood passed amid the crash of war, there an alchemist's old age flickering away amid cobwebs and gibberish. Something jocund and mischievous peeped out even in the cloister; gargoyles leered from the belfry, while ivy and holly grew about the cross. The Middle Ages were the true renaissance. Their Christianity was the theme, the occasion, the excuse for their art and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... taken aback and declared to the public almost with one accord that the writer's eccentricities had developed into mannerisms, that his theories of life were political manifestoes, that his dialects were gibberish, and his defiance of the orthodox canons of autobiography scarcely less than an ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... society in France, with all the self-complacency of besotted ignorance and provincial superciliousness. Searching out a place to his mind, this profound observer of men and manners, who had studied a foreign people, whose language when spoken was gibberish to him, by travelling five days in a public coach, and living four weeks in taverns and eating-houses, besides visiting three theatres, in which he did not understand a single word that was uttered, proceeded ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... himself with a bold bang on the door, followed by the pious ejaculation, 'Ave Maria!' The lame, or otherwise afflicted, are content with simply directing attention to their misfortunes, while the less 'favoured' attract public regard by humming a wild air, to which a gibberish libretto is attached, or by descanting upon social and political matters. The ill-paved condition of the Cuban streets, the inefficient supply of water, the bad lighting of the town at night, the total absence of anything like proper drainage, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... of bearing which the French call ARMOIRES PARLANTES; the Latins ARMA CANTANTIA; and your English authorities, canting heraldry; being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such-like mendicants, whose gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word, than the noble, honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which assigns armorial bearings as the reward of noble and generous actions, and not to tickle the ear with vain quodlibets, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... only what my eyes beheld, for I can make nothing out of their heathen gibberish. Yet she who journeyed with us, ever proving herself a modest, high-bred lady in times of sore trial, begged upon her knees, with tears hot upon her cheeks, to be permitted to accompany you and her husband. What result? Why, this ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... been careful to buy a young one that could not speak, for he knew the Morris boys would not want one chattering foreign gibberish, nor yet one that would swear. He had kept her in his bunk in the ship, and had spent all his leisure time in teaching her to talk. Then he looked at her anxiously, and said, "Show off ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... like a turn at frogging, and Josef, with Indian wordlessness, handed the net to him. Whereupon, with his flabby mouth wide and his large gray eyes gleaming, he proceeded to miss four easy ones in succession. And with that Josef, in a gibberish which is French-Canadian patois of the inner circles, addressed the Tin Lizzie and took away the net from him, asking no orders from me. The Lizzie, pipe in mouth as always, smiled just as pleasantly under this punishment as in the ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... eager to share Miss Keene's sentiments; "and he's so good to those outlandish niggers in the crew. I don't see how the captain could get on with the crew without him; he's the only one who can talk their gibberish and keep them quiet. I've seen him myself quietly drop down among them when they were wrangling. In my opinion," continued the young fellow, lowering his voice somewhat ostentatiously, "you'll find out when we get to ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... he cut in doing so, I shall not easily forget. He held it out at arm's length, grinned at it most horribly, and chattered some abominable gibberish in Tartaree, that no one understood, appearing to expect every moment that the glass would bite him. After some minutes spent in this way, he drew it near him, and by degrees became more confident. Buctoo then approached him and set it, telling him ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... these. That we eat Christ's body in the Eucharist is a belief that, in a practical way, can be understood perfectly by anyone; but the philosophy that is involved in this belief would be to most men the merest gibberish. Yet it is no more unimportant that those who do understand this philosophy, should do so truly and transmit it faithfully, than it is unimportant that a physician should understand the action of alcohol, because anyone independent of such ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the Magnifico and his poetic satellites; while the women, over and above any relish of the fun, really began to have an itch for the Brevi. Several couples had already gone through the ceremony, in which the conjuror's solemn gibberish and grimaces over the open book, the antics of the monkey, and even the preliminary spitting, had called forth peals of laughter; and now a well-looking, merry-eyed youth of seventeen, in a loose tunic and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... If we can prove in evidence that he is not settled in fact, it is another matter. What I said to Mr Adams was on a supposition that he was settled in fact; and indeed, if that was the case, I should doubt."—"Don't tell me your facts and your ifs," said the lady; "I don't understand your gibberish; you take too much upon you, and are very impertinent, in pretending to direct in this parish; and you shall be taught better, I assure you, you shall. But as to the wench, I am resolved she shall not settle here; I will not suffer such beauties as these to produce children for us to keep."—"Beauties, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... to write Philomath after his name, and whose whole extent of literary reputation is not more than two or three beggarly townlands, whom, by the way, he is inoculating successfully wid his own ripe and flourishing ignorance. No, sir; nor like Gusty Gibberish, or (as he has been most facetiously christened by his Reverence, Father O'Flaherty) Demosthenes M'Gosther, inasmuch as he is distinguished for an aisy and prodigal superfluity of mere words, unsustained by intelligibility or meaning, but who cannot claim in his own person a mile and a half of dacent ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... works of the poetical monarch, I may have altered some of the words of the quotation; but the rhymes sauce and rose I aver to be true to the primitive copy. Even Protestant refugees, born of French parents, brought up amongst their co-religionists and countrymen, wrote a strange gibberish, often ungrammatical, always unidiomatic, of which traces may be found even in Basnage and Ancillon. A recent French theologian, the clever author of a Life of Spinosa, written in Germany and published in Paris with some success, has such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... which she herself would have liked to make, that she cross-questioned Sylvia afterwards as to its meaning; but Sylvia lied fluently, asserting that it was just some of Professor Kennedy's mathematical gibberish ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... passage of sheer gibberish; then a dialogue of the noblest and most dramatic eloquence; then a chaotic alternation of sense and nonsense, bad Italian and mixed English, abject farce and dignified rhetoric, spirited simplicity and bombastic jargon. It would be more and less than just ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Malaga; "it all sounds like gibberish to me. As you thought the sturgeon so excellent at dinner, let me take out the value of the ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... thou art 'ware of," I soliloquised as I watched his retreating figure, whilst lighting my pipe. "As the other philosopher, Tycho Brahe, found inspiration in the gibberish of his idiot companion, so do I find food for reflection in thy casual courtesy, my friend. Possibly I have reached the highest point of all my greatness, and from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... with such mingle-mangle talk," ordered Mr. Meredith, fretfully. "Is 't not enough to have French gibberish ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and he observed that my lord and my lady were coming together more than they used to be since Miss Portman left the house. To which Champfort replied with an oath, like an unmannered reprobate as he is, and in his gibberish, French and English, which I can't speak; but the sense of it was this:—'My lord and lady shall never come together, if I can help it. It was to hinder this I got Miss Portman banished; for my lord was quite another man after she got Miss ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... America, and which provoked Caesar's laughter. He was constantly saying: "My friend," and he mingled Gallicisms with a lot of coarse expressions of Indian or mulatto origin, and with Italian words. Preciozi's dialect was a gibberish worthy of Babel. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... dragged out with a face the color of wet laundry soap. She had crying fits; at times her voice would change, and she'd speak a gibberish that Mr. Meeker declared was Russian; and after a trance she would eat for six. There was nothing about the senior Meeker Lizzie could describe, but she disliked Mrs. Meeker intensely. She made the preposterous ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his breakfast of mealy porridge, but he won't admit that it is to be called "paniche," preferring his own word "scoff;" so he shakes his head violently and says, "Nay, nay, paniche." Then, with many nods, "Scoff, ja;" and so in this strange gibberish of three languages he and the Frenchman carry on quite a pretty quarrel. Charlie also "mocks himself" of the other servants, I am informed, and asserts that he is the "indema" or headman. He freely boxes the ears of Jack, the Zulu refugee—poor Jack, who fled from his own ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... well; but his Irish gibberish is as Greek to me. All that I can make out is what ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... of wood rending and splitting,—as with a great broadaxe,—and a medley of blocks and ropes rattled to the deck with the 'thud of the falling bodies. Then, instead of stillness, moans and shrieks from above and below, oaths and prayers in English and French and Portuguese, and in the heathen gibberish of the East. As the men were sponging and ramming home in the first fury of hatred, the carpenter jumped out under the battle-lanthorn at the main hatch, crying in a wild voice that the old eighteens had burst, killing half their crews and blowing up the gundeck above them. At this many of our ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... forecastle gibberish, but, and it may have been that our partner being born with the wanderer's spirits could give meaning to the immemorial calling that speaks to the hearts of the English through the rude chanteys of the sea, something stirred me when the refrain ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... gibberish are they talking?" shrilled poor Head-nurse, trying to keep hope alive by being angry. The man who spoke Persian looked at ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... tail Kikuyu winds energetically back and forth on his little handle, and tries to keep his feet. And Brown! he is magnificent! His long lash sends out a volley of rifle reports, down, up, ahead, back; his cracked voice roars out an unending stream of apparent gibberish. Back and forth along the line of the team he skips nimbly, the sweat streaming from his face. And the oxen plod along, unhasting, unexcited, their eyes dreamy, chewing the cud of yesterday's philosophic reflections. The situation conveys the general impression of a peevish little stream breaking ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... as told by contemporaries and repeated from that day to this. It is hardly necessary to say that Barneveld calmly denied having conceived or even heard of the scheme. That men could go about looking each other in the face and rehearsing such gibberish would seem sufficiently dispiriting did we not know to what depths of credulity men in all ages can sink when possessed by the demon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dear, for pity's sake! I never could understand that gibberish. My poor father paid extra for me to learn under a native, but it seemed as if I always turned against it. Well, I don't understand about the cabbages; Gertrude certainly said they were quite sour, and mixed with ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "The news machine did that over at the Whiteside Morning Record. It was typing out clear copy, then suddenly there wasn't anything but gibberish." ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... me. Latin was my favorite study, and it seemed sacrilege to believe this gibberish to belong to the country ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... some pulling of caps soon, Hazel said to-day, in her gibberish. I couldn't think what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... captain. 'What's that you say? Oh, that's no English; I'll have none of your highway gibberish on my ship. We'll call you old Uncle Ned, because you've got no wool on the top of your head, just the place where the wool ought to grow. Step to port, Uncle. Don't you hear Mr Hay has picked you? Then I'll take the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... woman broke off her speech, or chant, which was so much musical gibberish to us, for all that we understood of what she was talking about, and seemed to fix her flashing eyes upon the deep shadow before her. Then in a moment they acquired a vacant, terrified stare, as though they ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... lose it; to feel an interest in rheumatism, an awe of bronchitis; to tell anecdotes, and to wear flannel. To you in strict confidence I disclose the truth: I am no longer twenty-five. You laugh; this is civilized talk: does it not refresh you after the gibberish you must have chattered in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the galaxy was a good Jew like themselves, their peculiar property; He had his earthly headquarters in Jerusalem; spoke, I suppose, only Hebrew, and considered other languages gibberish; of all this earth, was only interested in a tiny corner at the south-east end of the Mediterrancan; and of all the millions of humanity only in the million or two of his Chosen People. I say at once that, considering their history, and the universal ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... should stow him; and if he was discovered, to say that he was one of the house, and leave him to make it good. "You will hear what the gallants say," he added; "but I think thou wilt carry away but little on it; for when it is not French, it is Court gibberish; and that is as hard ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to Mr. Verdant Green, who, at first, imagined that he was required to seize it by its red-hot end, but was greatly relieved in his mind when he found that he had merely to take it by the handle, and repeat (as well as he could) a form of gibberish that Mr. Blades dictated. Having done this he was desired to transfer the poker to the Past Grand Hodman - ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... taking my French lessons with my good old Crebillon; yet my style, which was full of Italianisms, often expressed the very reverse of what I meant to say. But generally my 'quid pro quos' only resulted in curious jokes which made my fortune; and the best of it is that my gibberish did me no harm on the score of wit: on the contrary, it procured me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... I said, "is gibberish; mere words. Would it bring Clayte up before any one who had never seen him? Ask Captain Gilbert, who doesn't know the man. I say that's a list of the points at which he resembles every third office man you meet on ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... being then fairly inoffensive for the first time since the height of the storm. But the other boats simply took what the lifeboat left. The guaranteed identity of the lifeboat, and of the Norsemen (who replied to questions in gibberish), and of Simeon himself; the sou'westers, the life-belts and the lines; even the collection for the Lifeboat Fund at the close of the voyage: all these matters resolved themselves into a fascination which Llandudno could ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... me to learn to cut capers?-and dress like a monkey?-and palaver in French gibberish?-hey, would you?-And powder, and daub, and make myself ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... doubt it any longer; they are completely mad. (Aloud). Once more, I tell you, I understand nothing of all this gibberish; I will be master, and to cut short all kinds of arguments, either you shall both be married shortly, or, upon my word, you shall be ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... Monk" and suchlike anti-papal pornography, I doubt if there will be any Protestants left among the irresponsible rich. Those who do not follow the main current will probably take up with weird science-denouncing sects of the faith-healing type, or with such pseudo-scientific gibberish as Theosophy. Mrs. Piper (in an inelegant attitude and with only the whites of her eyes showing) has restored the waning faith of Professor James in human immortality, and I do not see why that lady should stick at one dogma amidst the present quite insatiable demand for creeds. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... can recognise," he said after a pause, as if thinking over all the dialects he had ever come across in his wanderings. "The poor chap has evidently gone mad and is jabbering some gibberish or other. Look how his ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... already knew the contents had now to be stuttered in a strange gibberish, in which a certain snuffle and gargle were not a little commended as something unattainable, I in a certain degree deviated from the matter, and diverted myself, in a childish way, with the singular names of these accumulated signs. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Technica" is a modification of Gray's; but, whereas he used both consonants and vowels to represent digits, and had to content himself with a syllable of gibberish to represent the date or whatever other number was required, I use only consonants, and fill in with vowels ad libitum, and thus can always manage to make a real word of whatever has to ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... absurd little creatures. Good-looking they are—you are a fine-looking man yourself, and your wife was certainly pretty—the children take after you both. I have nothing to say against their appearance; but they talk utter gibberish; and as to that eldest little girl, if she is not given something sensible to occupy her I cannot answer for the consequence. My dear David, I don't want ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... it was a shame to me, then, that I used that secrecy," said his mother, with a flash of new anger. "There is no shame attaching to me. I have no reason to be ashamed. I rid myself of the Jewish tatters and gibberish that make people nudge each other at sight of us, as if we were tattooed under our clothes, though our faces are as whole as theirs. I delivered you from the pelting contempt that pursues Jewish separateness. I am not ashamed that I did it. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... narrow-chested man, with a pointed beard and big ears—came and held a mirror to my mouth, and opened one of my veins, and talked a great deal of gibberish, whilst he made countless covert sheep's eyes at the pretty chambermaid, who had taken advantage of his arrival to overhaul my knapsack and help herself from my purse. I distinctly heard the arrangements made for my funeral, and the voice of the landlord ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... there was none to see. Children are even content to forego what we call the realities, and prefer the shadow to the substance. When they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because they are making believe to speak French. I have said already how even the imperious appetite of hunger suffers itself to be gulled and led by the nose with the fag ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you.'' At this Howell said with the most humble suavity, "Do I understand that the distinguished gentleman does not recognize what I have been reading?'' The preacher answered, "I don't understand any such gibberish; speak English.'' Thereupon Howell threw back his long black hair and launched forth into eloquent denunciation as follows: "Sir, is it possible that you come here to interpret to us the Holy Bible ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... beautiful dark-haired foreign lady, too—she is more fascinating to study than all the rest. She must be a Russian from her colouring, and, besides, she wears those wonderful embroideries. And her servants, too, talk some outlandish gibberish among themselves. Of course she belongs to the nobility, you can see that, even ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... person, are set apart for virtue. The ears of the people of England are distinguishing. They hear these men speak broad. Their tongue betrays them. Their language is in the patois of fraud, in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The people of England must think so, when these praters affect to carry back the clergy to that primitive evangelic poverty which in the spirit ought always to exist in them, (and in us, too, however we may like it,) but in the thing must be varied, when the relation of that body to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... as never knows beasts unless they're called out o' their names. Put 'em in Sunday clothes, and you know 'em, but in their work-a-day English you never know nought about 'em. I've met wi' many o' your kidney; and if I'd ha' known it, I'd ha' christened poor Jack's mermaid wi' some grand gibberish of a name. Mermaidicus Jack Harrisensis; that's just like their new-fangled words. D'ye believe there's such a thing as the Mermaidicus, master?" asked Will, enjoying his own joke uncommonly, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fix the rinds of scooped oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about their heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense verses ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... comprehend it to the probability that his mind was impaired by disease; and thrusting the book into the hands of his wife he entreated her to read it at once. He watched her breathlessly, and when she exclaimed, "I don't know what this means; it is gibberish," Jerrold exclaimed, "Thank God, I am ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... understand the gibberish of squires and knights-errant, and did nothing but eat, hold their peace, and stare at their guests, who with great relish were gorging themselves with pieces as big as their fists. The course of flesh being over, the goatherds spread on the skins a great number of parched acorns and half a ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... knew and thoroughly despised the character of this man, "none of your cogging gibberish; tell me truly, are you at ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... entreaty. And he began with a flood of speech to tell me how near he was to his end, with a number of outlandish, magical words such as "the great Magisterium," "the Red Lion," "the Red Tincture," and the like, till meseemed my brain reeled with the sinful gibberish; notwithstanding, to this day I believe that in all truth he was nigh attaining his purpose; and he might have done so at last were it not that, a short space after this, he was choked by the vapor from an alembic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nothing matters," he observed. "And perhaps there is a grain of freakishness in my nature. It amused me to go about uttering silly, commonplace phrases. I was never so well thought of in the islands till I began to jabber commercial gibberish like the veriest idiot. Upon my word, I believe that I was actually respected for a time. I was as grave as an owl over it; I had to be loyal to the man. I have been, from first to last, completely, utterly loyal ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... forest, how sweetly he talkt; And how perfectly well he appeared, DOLL, to know All the life and adventures of JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU?— "'Twas there," said he—not that his words I can state— 'Twas a gibberish that Cupid alone could translate;— But "there," said he, (pointing where, small and remote, The dear Hermitage rose), "there his JULIE he wrote,— "Upon paper gilt-edged, without blot or erasure; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... and want to have all the gibberish to yourself. That you should have it all to yourself in your own pulpit we accede to you; but out here, on the heath, surely I may have my turn. You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... an ibis, and write certain characters on it in the blood of a black ram, and go to a cross-road, or the sea-shore, or a river-bank at midnight: there you recite gibberish and then see a pretty lady riding a donkey, and she will put off her beauty like a mask and assume the appearance of old age, and will promise to obey you: ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Empiricis), written probably near the end of the fourth century. This work contains, amongst other things, a number of word-charms, or superstitious cure-formulas, that were, till lately, regarded—like Cato's word-cure for fractures of the bones—as mere unmeaning gibberish. Joseph Grimm and M. Pictet, however, think that they have found in these word-charms of Marcellus, specimens of the Gaulish or Celtic language several centuries older than any that were previously known to exist—none ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... when a scratching, scraping, boring noise on the outside of their bark roof temporarily disturbed their slumbers. Dol called out noisily, and, as was the way of that youngster on sundry occasions, talked some gibberish in his sleep. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... again Marie Louise waited and called, and told and retold her prayer till it turned to gibberish and she began to doubt her own name and to mix the telephone number hopelessly. Then she went into her hand-bag and pawed about in the little pocket edition of confusion till she found the note that Polly had sent her at once from Washington ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to me nothing but truth and sense. I answered him just as roughly as I did the rest, who jabbered mere gibberish. I couldn't make distinctions there and then. His appearance told what he had gone through lately clearer than his words; but where is the use of explaining? ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... veer, veer; gentle gallants, gentle gallants! Wind, I see him! Wind, I see him! Pourbossa, pourbossa! Haul all and one!'" When the anchor was hauled above the water they cried: "Caupon, caupon; caupon, cola; caupon holt; Sarrabossa!" When setting sail they began with the same kind of gibberish. "Hou! Hou! Pulpela, Pulpela! Hard out strife! Before the wind! God send! God send! Fair weather! Many Prizes! Many Prizes! Stow! Stow! Make fast and belay—Heisa! Heisa! One long pull! One long pull! Young blood! More mud! There, there! Yellow ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... meantime, St. Paul, I think, answers your question better than I could, but you wouldn't understand even his words, I fancy. There they are in the Greek," he opened a Testament and showed her a passage. "I believe you would think the English almost as great gibberish as this looks to you ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... again said lightly, "any American—any, that is, of the world—who has a colonial background for his family, has thought, probably, very much the same sort of things. Of course it would be all Greek or gibberish ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... abuse they can not avoid hearing. In cases of violent sick headache we often miscall objects without detecting it ourselves, and in delirium the speech mechanism works from violent organic discharges altogether without control. The senile old man talks nonsense—so-called gibberish—thinking he is ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... and trouble. Look at the handsome guard in his silver-plated harness. How much nicer he is than a gabbling Italian, or a Frenchman who compliments you one minute and behaves like a brute the next! It does my soul good to see the clean, rosy faces, and hear good English instead of gibberish.' ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Sunday in the tow of Cooper, who soon became a branch pilot in those waters about the parks and the West End, the Monument, St. Paul's and the lions; Cooper took a look at the arsenal, jewels, and armory [Tower of London]. He had a rum time of it in his sailor's rig; hoisted in a wonderful lot of gibberish." And with his fine stories of each day's sights in old London town, the young sailor would make merry evenings for his forecastle comrades, of whom it is recorded his strength could lay flat on their backs in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... in return with his choicest gibberish, which did perfectly well to express all the sentiments of fraternal affection he was at that moment experiencing; indeed, no one could have understood him had he spoken Maltese, and few were listening even to what was said, they were all too much occupied either with watching ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... under the sun," said Harkaway. "It's my opinion he has got the cheek to talk regular right-down gibberish to us." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the soldier, "and I have got no pass-word. I could not speak a syllable of their salvage gibberish, an it were to save me ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... (according to the usually accepted view) "Larrikin" from "larking." But the former explanation is the more probable. There is no connection with soldiers' "barracks;" nor is it likely that there is any, as has been ingeniously suggested, with the French word baragouin, gibberish. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... went on Drysdale. "I thought old Murdock would have wept on his neck. As it was, he scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... epoch, Andre Chenier, the delicate and superior artist who reopens antique sources of inspiration and starts the modern current, is guillotined; we possess the original manuscript indictment of his examination, a veritable master-piece of gibberish and barbarism, of which a full copy is necessary to convey an idea of its "turpitudes of sense and orthography."[41158] The reader may there see, if he pleases, a man of genius delivered up to brutes, coarse, angry, despotic animals, who listen to nothing, who comprehend ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... young man, a dentist and doctor, claiming to come from an eastern city, while sitting at the table last evening, after much insane gibberish, fell back intoxicated upon the floor, and lay insensible for some time. He was finally, when the others had finished eating, dragged off to bed in a most inglorious condition, to suffer later for his dissipation. O, how my heart ached for his dear old mother so far away! If she had seen ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... religion. This is not wonderful, since the Koran is never translated, and a very extraordinary desire for knowledge would be required to sustain a man in committing to memory pages and chapters of, to him, unmeaning gibberish. One only of all the native chiefs, Monyumgo, has sent his children to Zanzibar to be taught to read and write the Koran; and he is said to possess an unusual admiration of such civilization as he has seen among the Arabs. To the natives, the chief attention ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... Poknees. ''Tis our own language, sir,' I tells him, 'we did not steal it.' 'Shall I tell you what it is, my good woman?' says the Poknees. 'I would thank you, sir,' says I, 'for 'tis often we are asked about it.' 'Well, then,' says the Poknees, 'it is no language at all, merely a made-up gibberish.' 'Oh, bless your wisdom,' says I, with a curtsey, 'you can tell us what our language is without understanding it!' Another time we meet a parson. 'Good woman,' says he, 'what's that you are talking? Is it broken language?' 'Of course, your ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "your friends are all heroes, Pegtop—will Mr Wagtail fight also?" He stole close up to me, and exchanged his smart Creole gibberish for a quiet sedate ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
