It's "drivel," not "dribble."

From an article about Richard Dawkins in the Guardian (or should that be The Guardian?) yesterday:

"His orientation toward the world is the product of a classic category mistake, but because he’s nestled inside it so snugly he perceives complex concepts outside of his understanding as meaningless dribble."

And then saw the same usage in a book review this morning.

Dribble is a verb, people. One might dribble drivel, eh?

Ack! This is something I have fortunately not encountered. *shakes head sadly*

Some people either don't care or do not have a fine ear for language. My ex-husband used to mix up moot and mute which drove me crazy since the have almost, but not quite, opposite meanings: and 'cuttelry' ...

To crown it all he was totally unable to pronounce Nuriootpa, a town in my home state of South Australia.

Dribble is both a noun and a verb, and so is drivel. The main difference seems to be that dribble can apply to any liquid, whilst drivel only applies to saliva, hence its figurative use for meaningless utterances. I suppose a dribble is generally meaningless too, though...

On a similar note, have you noticed how restaurateurs like to use "drizzle" instead of "dribble", even when they apply a liquid that isn't separated into drops? (Like the ant-barrier of raspberry-coloured syrup they put around your dessert)

Interesting. I know some languages have issues with the differentiation between b and v (beati hispani quibus vivere bibere est, for instance) but I didn't know it could be on the radar for English.

Some of the English people seem to have a problem with the letter 'r' which is sometimes pronounced as 'w'.

I think that some of the anomalies stem from a hearing differential and it seems, not unexpectedly, to go with poor spelling.

If you look at the Norman names which begin with 'R' you get derivations such as from Roger becoming Hodge, Hodges, Odgers, Dodge and Lodge; Richard becomes Dick, Dix, Dickens, Dickson, Hicks, Wicks etc.

>6 pinkozcat:
Some of the English people seem to have a problem with the letter 'r' which is sometimes pronounced as 'w'.

Thwow them to the floor, perhaps?

Bugs Bunny is a wabbit.

Welease Woderwick!

Reminds me of my cousin Roderick who had the misfortune to be one of those who couldn't pronounce his Rs.

He had a brother, Neville, who lived with my grandparents and who was keen on a girl who had another suitor who was known in the family as "The Weptile Wival".

Linguist call it rhotic vs. non-rhotic. Alas, poor Wodwick was clearly a speaker of a non-rhotic form.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents

If you're non-rhotic, can you pronounce rhotic? Asking for a friend.

If you are nonrhotic (like me) you should probably not read Rude Ramsay and the roaring radishes out loud. But it is a fun book.

The OED (a habit that is as desirable as food and sex) suggests to me that the two words, as nouns, started off very close in meaning, as I'm sure thorold discovered too. That probably means that discrimination on the basis of stream continuity of driblet size comes into the 'pinhead-based angelic counting' category, if I might coin an addition to management-speak.

>11 IreneF: Does this mean my mother's Boston accent could be dignified as non-rhotic speech? Then she was not just "the lady with the accent," as all my friends in New York called her.

>15 krazy4katz:
Is this not a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

Well, good point! ;-)

>13 MarthaJeanne: This brings to mind Marie Osmond , who suffered from this problem and went ahead and recorded “Paper Roses”. (Oh how weal those woses seemed to be) Many of us are still laughing. Poor Mawie.

Lol! I attended a school production of a musical called "Carrots". The female lead sang the title song, "Cawots. Cawots".

That this clip hasn't been posted yet: http://youtu.be/2K8_jgiNqUc

He he! .. .. .. So where does Wichard Darkins fit into all this?

#1 "an article about Richard Dawkins in the Guardian (or should that be The Guardian?)" A journalist friend - who worked on other papers - tells me the practice is that only The Times has its initial "the" capitalized.

>3 pinkozcat: No wonder you divorced him.

Wanking officer