gabble

Hugo House is steamy by comparison, a hotbed of nerves and gabble.

A regular German—rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes I ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one’s ears good, after our sharp or slipshod American gabble.

He poked his head into the doorway and began to gabble good-naturedly about something or other, and after a few minutes we picked up our drinks and followed him back to the living room.

The Guide excoriated herself for her failure to make the Traveller understand the ecstasy of watching and waiting and overseeing a machine — how it was almost painful to be tossed into the real-time gabble of communication and conversation — and how their society, far from being an example of humankind’s doom, was, rather, its apotheosis.

As the arguments gabble on, only occasionally acknowledging their own hypothetical nature given how little we know about how the virus will proceed, how long the lockdown may last and whether there may be a second wave of infections when it is lifted, it’s tempting t o dip into another hypothetical.