BABEL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Babel

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/bˈæbəl/ Listen

noun

Babel n.

The city and tower in the land of Shinar, where the confusion of languages took place. "Therefore is the name of it called Babel."

Hence: A place or scene of noise and confusion; a confused mixture of sounds, as of voices or languages. "That babel of strange heathen languages." "The grinding babel of the street".

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Etymology of 'Babel'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Babel" Quotes from Famous Books

... utterances of "Tomato Jimmy," the boys at the back grew so boisterous that at one time it appeared inevitable that the meeting must break up in disorder. The chairman, the candidates, the ladies, the whole house rose, and one man towards the front made himself heard amid the babel to the effect that the ladies ought to walk out to show their resentment of the insults that had been offered their ...

— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... "Woolpack" with jugs, and the company settled down to the spree. At intervals the men offered to shout for a few friends, and, borrowing a dead marine from the heap of empty bottles, shuffled off to the hotel to get it filled. The noise grew to an uproar—a babel of tongues, sudden explosions of laughter, and the shuffling ...

— Jonah • Louis Stone

... lamp, of course, but rather like him in having to do with genii or giants or something of that sort. They say he commanded the giants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and higher above all the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said when they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of Babel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven— a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven ...

— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... ancient list of those who stood as the fathers of nomads, of musicians and workers in metal (Gen. iv. 1, l6b-26). This is followed by the primitive stories of the sons of God and the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 1-4), of Noah the first vineyard-keeper (ix. 20-27), and of the tower of Babel and the origin of different languages (xi. 1-9). In a series of more or less closely connected narratives the character and experiences of the patriarchs, the life of the Hebrews in Egypt and the wilderness, ...

— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions ...

— The Four Million • O. Henry

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