[A reduplicated derivative of TALK, with dimin. ending.]
1. The name given to the imperfect or broken English of some native races; esp. the lingua franca of negro slaves in the West Indies.
1807. H. Bolingbroke, Voy. Demerary, 341. It is curious that the talkee-talkee, or patois of the blacks, though it includes many African words, should have for its basis the English language, pared of inflections, and softened by a multitude of vowel terminations.
1808. Edin. Rev., XII. 413. The talkee-talkee, or negro jargon, is now chiefly English.
1810. Southey, Lett. to J. May, 5 Dec. The talkee talkee of the slaves in the Sugar Islands, as it is called, will prevail in Surinam.
1828. Life Planter Jamaica, 13. Ignorant of the negro corrupted dialect, or the talkee talkee language.
1856. J. H. Newman, Callista, i. (1890), 8. Not without parallel in the talkee-talkee of the West Indian negro.
2. Small-talk; petty or childish talk, chatter; continuous talk or prattle. (contemptuous.)
1812. Mar. Edgeworth, Vivian, x. There’s a woman, now, who thinks of nothing living but herself!—all talkee talkee!
1840. Fraser’s Mag., XXII. 55. The usual nothings which make up talkee-talkee.
1890. Nature, 6 March, 410/2. That ‘talkee-talkee’ so often forced into books of this kind.
1905. J. London, Tales of the Fish Patrol, I. 30. ‘Talkee talkee,’ I answered bitterly, for I knew now that he had understood all that passed between George and me. ‘What for talkee talkee? You no sabbe talkee talkee.’
attrib. 1869. Huxley, in Life (1900), I. xxiii. 309. The discourses are to [be] lessons and not talkee-talkee lectures.
