different between drabble vs brabble

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d?æb?l/
• Rhymes: -æb?l

Etymology 1

From Middle English drabelan

Verb

drabble (third-person singular simple present drabbles, present participle drabbling, simple past and past participle drabbled)

1. (transitive) To wet or dirty, especially by dragging through mud.
2. (intransitive) To fish with a long line and rod.

   to drabble for barbels

Etymology 2

From a word game in Monty Python's Big Red Book in which the first player to write a novel wins; the UK Science Fiction fandom agreed that 100 words will suffice; not, as is sometimes stated, from the surname of the author Margaret Drabble.

Noun

drabble (plural drabbles)

1. A short fictional story, typically in fan fiction, sometimes exactly 100 words long.

Usage notes

The "100 words" limit is the original meaning, although in practice (and drabble purists have denounced this extension), it frequently extends up to around 500 words, with a variety of limits used.

Synonyms

• flash fiction, flashfic, microfiction, short short story, spamfic, sudden fiction

Further reading

• An example of a German language drabble

See also

• “drabble” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• “drabble”, in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary, (Please provide a date or year).

Anagrams

• barbled, dabbler, rabbled

English

Etymology

From Middle Dutch brabbelen (“to quarrel, jabber”). Akin to babble. Compare German brabbeln (“to talk confusedly”).

Verb

brabble (third-person singular simple present brabbles, present participle brabbling, simple past and past participle brabbled)

1. (dated) To clamour; to contest noisily.
   • 1598, John Stow, Survey of London, London: J.M. Dent, 1912, p. 362,^[1]

     Then next is the Clinke, a gaol or prison for the trespassers in those parts; namely, in old time, for such as should brabble, frey, or break the peace on the said bank, or in the brothel houses, they were by the inhabitants thereabout apprehended and committed to this gaol, where they were straitly imprisoned.

   • 1640, George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum; or, Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc., in The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple George Herbert, London: Pickering, 1841, p. 141,^[2]

     Brabbling curs never want sore ears.

   • 1883, Edward Maunde Thompson, Preface to Diary of Richard Cocks, cape-merchant in the English factory in Japan, 1615-1622, London: Hakluyt Society, p. xxxvi,^[3]

     And it was not only with the English that the Dutch sailors quarrelled. They were drunken and riotous and “brabbled” in the streets, till at last the long-suffering Japanese lost patience and seizing two of them summarily cut off their heads.

2. To babble (of a stream or other watercourse).
   • 1902, Mary Johnston, Audrey, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Chapter 9, p. 121,^[4]

     Farther on, when they came to a miniature glen between the semblance of two hills, down which, in mockery of a torrent, brabbled a slim brown stream, MacLean stood still […]

   • 1921, Reginald Farrer, The Rainbow Bridge, London: E. Arnold & Co., Chapter 10, p. 181,^[5]

     Down in the middle, among mossy boulders, the beck brabbled through golden sheets of Draba […]

Noun

brabble (plural brabbles)

1. (dated) A brawl; a noisy contest; a wrangle.
   • 'c. 1593, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene 1,^[6]

     This petty brabble will undo us all.

   • 1837 Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History

     What they, by this their journey to Versailles, do specially want? The twelve speakers reply, in few words inclusive of much: "Bread, and the end of these brabbles […] "

Derived terms

• brabbler

Anagrams

• babbler, blabber