PRATE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does prate mean? 

• PRATE (noun)
  The noun PRATE has 1 sense:

1. idle or foolish and irrelevant talk

  Familiarity information: PRATE used as a noun is very rare.

• PRATE (verb)
  The verb PRATE has 1 sense:

1. speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly

  Familiarity information: PRATE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRATE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Idle or foolish and irrelevant talk

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

blether; chin music; idle talk; prate; prattle

Hypernyms ("prate" is a kind of...):

cackle; chatter; yack; yak; yakety-yak (noisy talk)

Derivation:

prate (speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly)

• PRATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they prate    ... he / she / it prates   
Past simple: prated   
Past participle: prated   
-ing form: prating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

blab; blabber; chatter; clack; gabble; gibber; maunder; palaver; piffle; prate; prattle; tattle; tittle-tattle; twaddle

Hypernyms (to "prate" is one way to...):

mouth; speak; talk; utter; verbalise; verbalize (express in speech)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "prate"):

babble; blather; blether; blither; smatter (to talk foolishly)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Sentence example:

Sam and Sue prate

Derivation:

prate (idle or foolish and irrelevant talk)

prater (an obnoxious and foolish and loquacious talker)

 Context examples 

But, my soul's bird, you hear me prate as though all were decided, when I have not yet taken counsel either with you or with my lady mother.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

For, after having been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this people, and observed every object upon which I cast mine eyes to be of proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting, and bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If your eyes were upon your sandals, how came ye to see this smile of which ye prate?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“You prate of holy things, to which your hog's mind can never rise. Keep silence, lest I call a curse upon you!”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My lady, when our liege lord, the king, at three score years, and my Lord Chandos at three-score and ten, are blithe and ready to lay lance in rest for England's cause, it would ill be-seem me to prate of service done.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It ill becomes me to prate too much of what I have endured for the faith, and yet, since you have observed it, I must tell you that this thickness and roundness of the waist is caused by a dropsy brought on by over-haste in journeying from the house of Pilate to the Mount of Olives.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)