chatter

Pronunciation: /ˈtʃætə/

The English word “chatter” has 14 meanings listed here.

noun

Talk, especially meaningless or unimportant talk.
The sound of talking.
The vocalisations of a Eurasian magpie, Pica pica.
The vocalisations of various birds or other animals.
An intermittent noise, as from vibration.
In national security, the degree of communication between suspect groups and individuals, used to gauge the degree of expected terrorist activity.
The situation where a drill or similar tool vibrates and tears the material rather than cutting it cleanly.
A group of songbirds.
One who chats.
A user of livestream chat.
A user of chat rooms.

verb

To talk idly.
To make a noise by rapid collisions.
To utter sounds which somewhat resemble language, but are inarticulate and indistinct.

Etymology

From Middle English chateren, from earlier cheteren, chiteren (“to twitter, chatter, jabber”), of imitative origin. Compare Saterland Frisian tjoaterje (“to chatter”), West Frisian tsjotterje (“to chatter”), Dutch schateren, schetteren (“chatter”), Dutch koeteren (“jabber”), Middle Low German kidderen (“to chatter”), German Low German queteln (“to chatter”), dialectal German kaudern (“to gobble…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.