LanguagePalaver: What's All the Palaver About?

I thought everyone knew the word palaver.  It turns out hardly anyone does.  MysteryWriter and NorthernOutlaw.  My friend Nettie's husband.  My physical therapist.

Pudding Man urged me not to use the word in my blog name, saying that it would mock him for not knowing what it meant.  Julie chimed in that she'd seen it used twice in the current New Yorker.  Pudding Man said that proved his point.

Answers.com includes the following uses as a noun:

• idle chatter
• talk intended to charm or beguile
• incessant and usually inconsequential talk
• flattery intended to persuade
• loud and confused and empty talk

and as a verb:

• to flatter or cajole
• to talk volubly, persistently, and usually inconsequentially
• speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
• influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering
• have a lengthy discussion, usually between people of different backgrounds

with the following synomyms:

babble, blab, blabber, chat, chatter, chitchat, jabber, prate, prattle, small talk. gab, gas, yak, clack, rattle (on), run on, go on, spiel, run off at the mouth, shoot the breeze/bull, blandishment, cajolery, hot air, empty words, empty talk, rhetoric, chatter, piffle, tittle-tattle, twaddle, maunder, gibber, tattle, gabble, wheedle, cajole, blarney, coax, sweet-talk, inveigle.

It's from the Portuguese word palavra, speech, alteration of Late Latin parabola, speech, parable.

It's a great word.  I think the first time I came across it was in James Joyce’s story, "The Dead":

"Tell me. Lily," he said in a friendly tone, "do you still go to school?"

"O no, sir," she answered. "I'm done schooling this year and more."

"O, then," said Gabriel gaily, "I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh? "

The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness:

"The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you."

Gabriel coloured, as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes.

(This reminds me of when I saw the musical version of "The Dead" at the Kennedy Center several years ago. On the way out I overheard a woman saying to her husband "well, that was an odd little thing to make a play out of.")

The reason that the palaver line stuck with me was that it appeared as the epigraph to Part I of Brenda Maddox's 1988 biography of Joyce's wife Nora.  (I just pulled the book off my shelf to make sure I didn't make that up and found the following line underlined:  "Ironically, it may have been Nora's singularly pleasing disposition and humor (traits common in second children) that marked her out for fostering."  I'm a second child.  No wonder I liked that book so much.)

What was I talking about?  Anyway, I realize I just made Pudding Man's point for him several times over.  I still think palaver is a great word, and an apt description of this post.

Plus, Egbert offered to stand on a street corner holding a sign reading "What's All the Palaver about MB Palaver?"

What's not to like?

Comments

[eggy]

I note that the offer was made during a period of fair weather.

[contessa]

For some reason, this second-child business reminds me of the old nursery rhyme beginning "Monday's child is fair of face...." I first came across this in a Mary Poppins book, and asked my mother where my brother (the first born) and I fell in terms of days of the week. I was smugly satisfied since I was born on a Monday, while my brother was born on Wednesday -- hence "full of woe" -- and enjoyed reciting the poem to him. (I thought woe meant getting into trouble, not grief or sadness.)

I can still do the whole poem, if anyone wants to check out his/her day of the week, but I can tell you in advance that Sunday is the best.

[mbpalaver]

Contessa -- Nowadays you can easily check what day you were born (and lots of other more useful things) at http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/. How does Friday stack up against Sunday?