babel

also n.

1. A confusion of sounds or voices. See synonyms at noise.
2. A scene of noise and confusion.

[After BABEL.]

noun

Sounds or a sound, especially when loud, confused, or disagreeable: clamor, din, hubbub, hullabaloo, noise, pandemonium, racket, rumpus, tumult, uproar. See sounds/pleasant sounds/unpleasant sounds/neutral sounds or silence.

from Akkadian
This word originated in Iraq

It's in the Book: the story of why we use babel to mean a noisy clash of languages and speakers, all striving in vain to be heard and understood. According to the Hebrew Bible, God was worried that humans communicating with one another would get too uppity, so He split up their language in a place called Babel. In the King James Version, here is the gist of the story from Genesis 11:

The last sentence suggests that the name Babel means "confusion" in the original Hebrew. But it doesn't, except in this sentence. It is simply the Hebrew name for the city of Babylon. Perhaps that was enough; Babylon must have had a noisy variety of languages in biblical times. In any case, Babel came to Hebrew from Akkadian, the chief language of Babylon. The Akkadian Bab-ilu means "gate of God" and is probably a translation from an earlier Sumerian term, Ka-dingir.

The ancient city of Babylon, on the Euphrates River about fifty miles south of present-day Baghdad, exists only in ruins today, and there are no speakers of ancient Akkadian left. It was a Semitic language, related to Arabic and Hebrew, and spoken thousands of years ago in the land now known as Iraq. Another Akkadian word in English is ziggurat (1877), the name for a style of step pyramid used by the Babylonians as a temple.

In English, the name Babel was used as early as 1382 by John Wycliffe in his translation of the Bible. By 1529 it also was being used with today's broader meaning of any incoherent collection of noise or speech. Strangely enough, the word with two b's, babble, is not related but goes back to a common Indo-European word imitating the sound to which it refers.

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IN BRIEF: n. - (Genesis 11:1-11) a tower built by Noah's descendants (probably in Babylon) who intended it to reach up to heaven.

Tutor's tip: "Babble" is chatter, "babel" is a racket or din, and "Babel" is the city where the biblical tower was built.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - uforståelig snak i munden på hinanden, støjende forsamling

Nederlands (Dutch)
(toren van) Babel, (spraak)verwarring, chaos

Français (French)
n. - Babel

Deutsch (German)
n. - Durcheinander, (Sprach)verwirrung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - η Βαβέλ, βαβυλωνία, χάβρα, οχλαγωγία

Italiano (Italian)
Babele

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Babilônia (Geog.), confusão (f)

Русский (Russian)
Вавилонская башня, вавилонское столпотворение

Español (Spanish)
n. - jaleo, torre de Babel

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - förbistring, virrvarr

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
巴别塔

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 巴別塔

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 바벨[탑], 바빌론

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - バベル, バベルの塔, 摩天楼, ガヤガヤ, ことばの混乱, バーベリ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) صخب, جلبه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮המולה, מהומה, רעש, בבל‬

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