Definition of "jabber"

Allanson made some sound in his throat, as if attempting to speak, but his tongue refused its office, and he only jabbered.

1829, James Hogg, The Shepherd’s Calendar, New York: A.T. Goodrich, Volume I, Chapter 9, “Mary Burnet,” p. 184

“What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 19”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

She had Lord James' collar in one big fist and she pounded the table with the other and talked a blue streak. Nobody could make out plain what she said, for she was mainly jabbering Swede lingo, but there was English enough, of a kind, to give us some idee.

1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 12, in Mr. Pratt's Patients

He wept very little, but when he wept he howled aloud, and jabbered wild abuse, threats and recriminations through the wet torrent of his howling.

1939, H. G. Wells, The Holy Terror‎, Book One, Chapter 1, Section 2

And, is there less Probability in my Account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many Thousands even in this City, who only differ from their Brother Brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a Sort of a Jabber, and do not go naked.

1735, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, in The Works of Jonathan Swift, edited by George Faulkner, Dublin, 1735, Volume 3, A Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson, pp. v-vi

Two tongues from the depths,Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike,Fling their staccato tantalizationsInto a wildcat jabberOver a gossamer web of unanswerables.

1918, Carl Sandburg, “Jabberers”, in Cornhuskers‎, New York: Henry Holt & Co, page 68

Mark Pauline has a good line of gab, in his elliptical, left-handed fashion. He's at relative rhetorical ease with classy theoretical jabber such as emergent behavior, cyborganics, chaos theory, transparent interfaces, artificial life, and the machinic phylum.

1996 July, Bruce Sterling, “Is Phoenix Burning”, in Wired‎

Have the boys box, one jabbing and the other practicing the methods of boxing a jabber.

1939, Edwin L. Haislet, Boxing in Education, page 160

The jabber was the most popular hand-operated corn planter ever devised. […] Inset shows jaws closed for jabbing (left) and open for depositing kernels (right).

1999, Nicholas P. Hardeman, Across the Bloody Chasm