palaver

1. 1.

   flattery intended to persuade

   Synonymsblandishmentcajolery

   Broaderflattery
2. 2.

   loud and confused and empty talk

   “mere rhetoric”

   Synonymshot airempty wordsempty talkrhetoric

   Broadernonsense

Other forms of palaver

plural

palavers·

past tense

palaverred·

present participle

palaverring·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about palaver

What does palaver mean?

palaver means "speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in palaver?

palaver has 3 syllables and divides as pa-la-ver under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for palaver?

Close synonyms include chatter, piffle, prate, tittle-tattle, twaddle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is palaver a common word?

palaver is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.