BUR-bul

Definition

(noun/verb) A gentle, continuous murmuring sound made by water or a person speaking rapidly and excitedly.

Example

The hikers followed the burble of the stream through the dense forest long before they could see it, the sound guiding them toward water and rest.

Word Origin

Burble is an example of onomatopoeia — a word whose sound imitates the thing it describes. It emerged in Middle English as an imitative word for the sound of bubbling or gurgling water, related to the Old French borboiller, meaning “to bubble.” Lewis Carroll famously used it in Jabberwocky — “the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came” — cementing its place in the English literary imagination as a word that sounds exactly like what it means.