entry
garrulity
/ɡəˈɹuː.lɪ.ti/Talkativeness; chatty overabundance
From Latin garrul (chattering).
from Latin garrulitatem (nominative garrulitas ) "chattering, loquacity,"
from French garrulité
Word Ancestry
from Latin garrulitatem (nominative garrulitas ) "chattering, loquacity,"
from French garrulité
Some words sound like what they mean, and this one practically rattles on the page. Latin had garrulus for a person who just would not stop talking, and French passed along garrulité before English picked it up in the 1580s, when learned borrowings were the fashion in polite writing. It sits near cousins like garrulous and garrulousness, while loquaciousness and verbosity live in the same neighborhood of too-many-words, even if they arrived by different roads. The nice little sting in garrulity is that it sounds almost elegant right up until you realize it means someone has turned conversation into a machine gun of syllables. Say it once and you can practically hear the chatter continuing after the room has gone silent.
The Story
Some words sound like what they mean, and this one practically rattles on the page. Latin had garrulus for a person who just would not stop talking, and French passed along garrulité before English picked it up in the 1580s, when learned borrowings were the fashion in polite writing. It sits near cousins like garrulous and garrulousness, while loquaciousness and verbosity live in the same neighborhood of too-many-words, even if they arrived by different roads. The nice little sting in garrulity is that it sounds almost elegant right up until you realize it means someone has turned conversation into a machine gun of syllables. Say it once and you can practically hear the chatter continuing after the room has gone silent.
Kin & Kindred
From 'garrul'·chattering, talkative
Derived Terms
English words from this root