Today's Word "Natter"
To chatter mindlessly
on
Published in Vocabulary
natter \NAE-dehr\ (verb) - 1 : To nag, grumble, complain (mostly Scotland and Northern England); 2 : to chatter mindlessly.
"Whenever Angela gets lonely she comes over to natter the afternoon away with me over tea."
It may be a variant of dialectal gnatter "to nibble, chatter" or it may be a blend of "nag" and "chatter," no one knows for sure. It is a fairly recent word, first recorded in 1804 in Scotland, where it originally meant "nag, grumble, complain." It seems unrelated to "natty" as in "nattily dressed;" this word is probably a corruption of "neat." The activity is nattering and those who indulge in it are natterers. Nattery people are those with a proclivity to natter.
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