Now dial. [The vb. and sb. (known in 1573 and a. 1639, respectively) were perh. altered from TATTLE; the earliest appearance of twattle yet recorded being in the reduplicated TWITTLE-TWATTLE (1556), app. from TITTLE-TATTLE (evidenced a. 1529).
The group of words tittle, tittle-tattle, twittle, twattle, twittle-twattle, and twaddle, being primarily colloquial and largely echoic, is prob. far from fully represented in written remains, so that dated evidence for the chronological order of these shows many lacunæ; the important data are that tittle, to whisper, is known from 1399, and tattle (in tattler) from c. 1450, and that tittle-tattle, twittle-twattle, twattle, and twaddle, and their derivatives, appear successively later. No reason for the suggested change of tattle to twattle has been found, but the passage of twattle into twaddle seems certain.]
Idle talk, chatter, babble. Also in comb. twattle-basket, a chatterbox.
Passing in later use into the sense of TWADDLE sb.
a. 1639. W. Whateley, Prototypes, I. xix. (1640), 234. Being men of tongue,… their chiefe employment is twattle.
1650. B., Discolliminium, 47. It is pity any honest man should lose his life for want of a game at Twattle. [Cf. above I cannot hold my tongue for my life.]
1687. Miége, Gt. Fr. Dict., II. Twattle-basket,… un caseur.
1699. T. Brown, Lett. to Dr. Brown at Tunbridge, Wks. 1711, IV. 133. The empty Twattle of these silly … Country Projectors.
1715. trans. C’tess D’Anuoy’s Wks., 462. Hold thy Peace, Twattle-basket.
1720. De Foe, Apparition in 1665, Wks. 1841, XIX. 259. In the midst of our twattle.
1824. Cobbett, Weekly Reg., L. 12 June, 674. Men who have no cant, no evangelical twattle.
1876–. in dialect glossaries (Yorksh., E. Anglia).
