different between screech vs jabber

English

Etymology

1602; altered with expressive vowel lengthening from earlier skrech (1577), variant of obsolete scritch, from Middle English skriken, shrichen, schrichen (1250), from Old English (attested as scriccettan) and Old Norse skríkja, both from Proto-Germanic *skr?kijan? (compare Icelandic skríkja, Old Saxon scric?n, Danish skrige, Swedish skrika), derivative of *skr?han? (compare Middle Dutch schriën, German schreien, Low German dial. schrien, schriegen), ultimately of imitative origin.

Pronunciation

• enPR: skr?ch, IPA^(key): /sk?i?t?/
  • (UK) IPA^(key): [sk?i?t?]
  • (US) IPA^(key): [sk?it?]
• Rhymes: -i?t?

Noun

screech (countable and uncountable, plural screeches)

1. A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.
2. A harsh, shrill cry, as of one in acute pain or in fright; a shriek; a scream.
   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 6

     That the night owl should sreech before the noonday sun, that the bat should wheel around the bad of beauty [...]

3. (Newfoundlander, uncountable) Newfoundland rum.
4. A form of home-made rye whiskey made from used oak rye barrels from a distillery.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

screech (third-person singular simple present screeches, present participle screeching, simple past and past participle screeched)

1. To make such a sound.
2. (intransitive, figuratively) to travel very fast, as if making the sounds of brakes being released

Translations

Anagrams

• creches, crèches

English

Pronunciation

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

Etymology 1

Imitative.

Verb

jabber (third-person singular simple present jabbers, present participle jabbering, simple past and past participle jabbered)

1. (intransitive) To talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly; to utter gibberish or nonsense.
   • 1829, James Hogg, The Shepherd’s Calendar, New York: A.T. Goodrich, Volume I, Chapter 9, “Mary Burnet,” p. 184,^[1]

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

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 19,^[2]

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

2. (transitive) To utter rapidly or indistinctly; to gabble.
   • 1939, H. G. Wells, The Holy Terror, Book One, Chapter 1, Section 2,^[3]

     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.

Translations

Noun

jabber (uncountable)

1. Rapid or incoherent talk, with indistinct utterance; gibberish.
   • 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,^[4]

     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.

   • 1918, Carl Sandburg, “Jabberers” in Cornhuskers, New York: Henry Holt & Co., p. 68,^[5]

     Two tongues from the depths,

     Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike,

     Fling their staccato tantalizations

     Into a wildcat jabber

     Over a gossamer web of unanswerables.

Derived terms

• jabberment (obsolete)

Translations

Etymology 2

jab +? -er

Noun

jabber (plural jabbers)

1. One who or that which jabs.
2. A kind of hand-operated corn planter.
   • 1999, Nicholas P. Hardeman, Across the Bloody Chasm

     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).