twattle

verb

1. (ambitransitive, archaic)To talk in a digressive or long-winded way.

   “After all, she objected, Do not Men run visiting from House to House, for no other purpose but to twattle, spending their time in idle and fruitless discourse?”

   “Tis very well, Mistress, says he, and are you not a fine Gossiping Lady, do you think, to twattle your Husband thus out of his Life and Fortune?”

   “He now and then twattles a little , as an old gentleman may when lamenting the degeneracy of the evil times on which his gray hairs have fallen; but his Introductions and Notes are always gravely entertaining, and generally learnedly instructive.”

   “He has no story to tell, it is true, but is eminently readable, for he writes most forcible, idiomatic English, is never dull in his didactics, never twattles, is learned without pedantry, and although the topics treated are so diverse, yet there is a natural consecutiveness from first to last, and no abrupt transition.”

2. (archaic, transitive)To cosset; to pet or coddle.

   “Never fear her, I warrant you, she that will ask for a weapon is not desperate; get you gone in to her, and twattle her out of the sullens if you can; if not, I'le not long be absent.”

   “For se waik an' se silly, an' helpless was I, I was always a tumbling down then, While me mother would twattle me gently, and cry Honey Jenny: tak' care o' thysen.”

   “Thoo twattles on wi ' ť pup ez if ' t wur a bairn.”

noun

1. (archaic, countable, uncountable)Chatter; twaddle.

   “Continue, if you choose, your twattle against Homœopathy; distort it, misinterpret it, calumniate and deride its author; the unprejudiced legions will soon be able to decide on which side is the truth.”

   “It concedes too much to you Northern fellows; and all the old man said about magnanimity was mere twattle.”

   “The penetrating power of that saying might atone for pages of twattle, and Carlyle has flashes of such tremendous insight as is only given to masters in literature.”

   “The lies, twattles, and contrivances about this affair, are innumerable.”

2. (archaic)A dwarf.

   “PIGMEO, a pigmey, a kinde of little man like a dwarfe, a dandiprat, a twattle, or an elfe. Some thinke that they be but a kind of spirits ingendred of the corruption of the earth, even as the Scarab is bread of horses doung.”

   “She had telt him, indignant, 'I am not ten.' 'No? An uncomely twattle, are ye no?' 'A twattle?' she had said. 'A mimmerkin. A dwarf.'”