drivel
Americannoun
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saliva flowing from the mouth, or mucus from the nose; slaver.
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childish, silly, or meaningless talk or thinking; nonsense; twaddle.
verb (used without object)
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drivels,
present (3rd person singular)
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driveled,
past participle, past
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drivelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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driveling,
present participle
-
drivelling
present participle (especially British)
-
to let saliva flow from the mouth or mucus from the nose; slaver.
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to talk childishly or idiotically.
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Archaic. to issue like spittle.
verb (used with object)
-
drivels,
present (3rd person singular)
-
driveled,
past participle, past
-
drivelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
driveling,
present participle
-
drivelling
present participle (especially British)
-
to utter childishly or idiotically.
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to waste foolishly.
verb
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to allow (saliva) to flow from the mouth; dribble
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(intr) to speak foolishly or childishly
noun
-
foolish or senseless talk
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saliva flowing from the mouth; slaver
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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drivelsimple
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drivelssimple
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have driveledperfect
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have drivelledperfect
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has driveledperfect
-
has drivelledperfect
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am drivelingprogressive
-
am drivellingprogressive
-
are drivelingprogressive
-
are drivellingprogressive
-
is drivelingprogressive
-
is drivellingprogressive
-
have been drivelingperfect progressive
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have been drivellingperfect progressive
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has been drivelingperfect progressive
-
has been drivellingperfect progressive
Past
-
driveledsimple
-
drivelledsimple
-
had driveledperfect
-
had drivelledperfect
-
was drivelingprogressive
-
was drivellingprogressive
-
were drivelingprogressive
-
were drivellingprogressive
-
had been drivelingperfect progressive
-
had been drivellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of drivel
before 1000; Middle English dryvelen, variant of drevelen, Old English dreflian; akin to draff
Explanation
Drivel is useless, boring, nonsensical information. Your parents might think the articles in your favorite fashion magazine are drivel (but they'll change their tune when you become a famous designer). Etymologists suspect drivel comes to us from the Old Norse word draf, meaning "malt dregs." This would make sense, given that drivel is usually talk or writing about as useless as dregs. If you don't prepare for an oral report, the unfortunate result may be that your teacher finds your disorganized ramblings to be pure drivel. Drivel also means to dribble saliva. If a friendly dog licks your hand, leaving it wet and gooey, you can assume he driveled on it.
Vocabulary lists containing drivel
There's No There There: Synonyms for "Empty"
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"The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," Vocabulary from Act 2
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"The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act II
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
While making space for such drivel, the museum ignores huge swaths of American history.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
It was "20 tracks of instrumental drivel", she says.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2025
Maybe the drivel would sate you for an hour, but something with genuine substance would taste and feel a whole lot better in the long run.
From Salon ● Apr. 4, 2025
But some of the books I got were pure academic drivel, totally useless, that gave me no guidance or comfort.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2024
Beastly Thibaut is here with another man today, hence I am writing like a demon, any old drivel, so as not to draw attention to myself.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
"I was just part of this greater thing, or place, or force, or energy," he drivels, like a semi-articulate hippy.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 10, 2011
I weep when I note how she drivels; I sigh o'er her fake philanthropies; I am pained when I see how she frivols, Like a kitten, with serious topics.
From Hermione's Group of Thinkers by Don Marquis
He wishes for 'a boat' to sail the deeps— Of ocean?—No, of air; and then he makes Another outcry for 'a little boat,' And drivels seas to set it well afloat.
From Don Juan by George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron
Pope, Jonson, Steevens and even Malone have made so many minute, technical changes in the Folio Plays of 1623, printed seven years after the death of Shakspere, that their presumptive elucidation often drivels into obscurity.
From Shakspere, Personal Recollections by John A. Joyce
The dog that has genuine rabies grows sullen, it hides in comers, and it snaps at everything presented to it A sticky, frothy mucus drivels from its mouth and its eyes become red.
From Essays In Pastoral Medicine by Austin ?Malley
Then his reflections driveled off into stupor, and he sat on an empty keg with the conical crown of his old felt hat pointed forward, and his hands hanging limply between his knees.
From Stories of the Foot-hills by Margaret Collier Graham
And the man driveled on in the dark, concerning himself for the most part with those interests which had occupied his life when he was a boy.
From Lying Prophets by Eden Phillpotts
Well, he driveled along for a while, talking the awfulest bosh; and pretty soon he asked me if I was fond of mock-turtle soup.
From Elbow-Room A Novel Without a Plot by Charles Heber Clark
All the way up the mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his intelligence in life had skipped.
From The Gentle Grafter by H. C. Greening
"I oughtn't to have driveled about that accident," he said.
From An Unpardonable Liar by Gilbert Parker
Dogs, dogs," drivelled old Horace Talbot, "Beachfield 's always talking about dogs.
From The Sport of the Gods by Paul Laurence Dunbar
There are multitudes of cases in which, when too great a weight has been crowded on the delicate organism through which thoughts move, its balance has been upset, and it has drivelled into idiocy.
From Love to the Uttermost Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. by F. B. (Frederick Brotherton) Meyer
M. de Maurepas was growing feeble, the friends of M. Necker declared that he drivelled, and the latter already aspired to the aged minister's place.
From A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6 by Robert Black
There was no other word to express it; drivelled.
From Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
“Yet you will say to His Majesty that I did suggest–yes, I do now–that they had better not––” His utterance drivelled to incoherency.
From The Missourian by Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
Half of Shakespeare's characters are less creations than caricatures: a fatuous Ajax, a vicious Achilles, a sniveling Thersites, a driveling Nestor.
From Time Magazine Archive
"I may be an old crone," grumped Princess Alice, "but I'm not driveling enough to have tea with a Teddy bear."
From Time Magazine Archive
There was considerable of it, and Miss Miranda remarked, among other things, that so absent-minded a child was sure to grow up into a driveling idiot.
From Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
That play will end by making a driveling idiot of me.
From The Hillman by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
Oh, how the stranger did snort at "that driveling trash."
From Two Little Savages Being the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned by Ernest Thompson Seton
"What a froward, drivelling flibbergib have I taken to my bosom!"
From Time Magazine Archive
“Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. ‘Go up alonger this drivelling sick man,’ he says to his wife, ‘and Magwitch, lend her a hand, will you?’
From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
“Instead of drivelling away about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks.”
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
It was mere drivelling nonsense that I talked out there in the shell-hole.
From "All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel" by Erich Maria Remarque
To him it was anathema, the root of all evil, the Goliath he was out to destroy, the blind beast squatting on men's bones, the idiot drivelling on the village green.
From What Not A Prophetic Comedy by Dame Rose Macaulay
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
