Literary notes about Drivel (AI summary)
In literature, the word "drivel" is often deployed as a dismissive label for talk or writing that is deemed foolish, banal, or lacking in intellectual substance. Authors and characters alike use it to mark speech that ranges from immature and nonsensical to overtly absurd, as when a character insists on adult-level drivel rather than schoolboy babble [1] or when speech is condemned as “absolute drivel” once arguments commence [2]. The term also appears in critical discourses where it contrasts with what is held up as dignified language, highlighting the perceived gap between meaningful communication and empty, sentimental rhetoric [3, 4]. Sometimes, drivel serves as a humorous or sarcastic jab designed to dismiss overly elaborate or unworthy commentary, urging interlocutors to forgo drivel in favor of substance [5, 6, 7]. In all its uses, the term encapsulates an aesthetic judgment—a quick and easy shorthand for the dismissal of thoughts that fail to meet the speaker's standard of clarity, wit, or truth.
- Charles: if you must drivel, drivel like a grown-up man and not like a schoolboy.
— from Major Barbara by Bernard Shaw - He talks absolute drivel as soon as he begins to argue."
— from Flower o' the Peach by Perceval Gibbon - “What I hate is this idiotic drivel about 'I am God—I am man—I ride the winds—I look through the smoke—I am the life sense.'
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald - It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent drivel from beginning to end; and so was his lengthy speech on the scaffold afterward.
— from The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain by Mark Twain - Why don't you call me down when I start that drivel?
— from The Straw by Eugene O'Neill - "Angela," I said, and if my voice was stern, well, whose wouldn't have been, "this is all perfect drivel."
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - "Is it likely that I would come out here in order to talk drivel?"
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
