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)
-
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.
-
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
-
am drivelingprogressive
-
am drivellingprogressive
-
are drivelingprogressive
-
are drivellingprogressive
-
is drivelingprogressive
-
is drivellingprogressive
-
have been drivelingperfect progressive
-
have been drivellingperfect progressive
-
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
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
I open it and the usual drivel unfolds.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2023
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
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
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
He dilates his nostrils as much as possible; he drivels, saying to himself that there is enough there to last for a year, for ten years, for his whole life!
From The Temptation of St. Antony or A Revelation of the Soul by Gustave Flaubert
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
His mouth was drawn awry, his speech entirely inarticulate, his eye obscured by thick rheum, and his clothes were stained by the saliva that occasionally driveled from his lips.
From The Adventures of Hugh Trevor by Thomas Holcroft
The very horses had caught the inspiration of the moment, champing bits in their effort to forge to the front rank, while the blood-stained slaver coated many breasts or driveled from our boots.
From The Outlet by Andy Adams
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
He had driveled along respectably so far, he thought, but he had the sentimental longings of years, starved of expression, culminating in his heart.
From The Gentleman from Indiana by Booth Tarkington
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
"I'm naturally anxious that it may be a son," he drivelled, "as there are so few male representatives of the old name now."
From Some Everyday Folk and Dawn by Miles Franklin
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
Yes, Yetta," he drivelled on, "I luv you already since a long while.
From Comrade Yetta by Albert Edwards
There was no other word to express it; drivelled.
From Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
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
Next she dealt with Sancho, whom Pascherette had lured back to the woman's mercy; and Sancho emerged from Dolores's presence a driveling imbecile.
From The Pirate Woman by Aylward Edward Dingle
Wearied with the monotony of fashionable dissipation and the driveling idiocy of flirtations, women were glad to hear a few sensible, wholesome truths.
From History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
One would not call it impudent, because it is so silly—it is the driveling of a fool.
From The Journal of Arthur Stirling : the Valley of the Shadow by Upton Sinclair
"What a froward, drivelling flibbergib have I taken to my bosom!"
From Time Magazine Archive
“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
“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
"If you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."
From A Poached Peerage by William Magnay
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.
