Our story begins with the biblical Tower of Babel. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for them by building a city with a tower whose top would graze the heavens. But God disapproved and stopped construction by confusing the language of the workers so they could no longer understand each other. One ancient rendering of the name for the tower was labile (literally, “gate of God”). Hebrew speakers turned labile as Babel, a term that also sounds like balal, the Hebrew word for “confuse.” That similarity either confused or inspired English speakers, who translated the biblical account this way: Therefore its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.

By the early 16th century, English speakers were also using Babel for any general confusion of sounds or voices. So did that Babel give birth to the babble that means “chatter” or “meaningless vocal sounds”? Nope. That second kind of babble came into use in English a few hundred years before the confused Tower of Babel sense became established. The babble associated with babies is believed to have been coined in imitation of the sounds made by the wee ones just learning the language.