to yack away
1
9.1
- phrasal verb
- /jæk əˈweɪ/
- Informal
:
charlar sin parar
- During the meeting, he kept yacking away about his vacation plans, ignoring the agenda.
Examples
-
She's yacking away downstairs again.
Fiction book (1998) -
My neighbor is always yacking away loudly on her phone, making it hard to concentrate.
-
I tried to watch the movie, but my friend wouldn't stop yacking away about the plot.
Synonyms
86
2.7
To talk quickly and without stopping about unimportant things
14
9.0
Talk loudly for a long time while complaining
10
6.0
Talk for a long time in a boring, flat voice
6
7.7
To talk for a long time in a relaxed, often boring way
5
6.6
To talk for a long time about small boring things
3
8.8
To talk a lot about unimportant things in an annoying way
3
8.4
To talk quickly about small, unimportant things
2
7.7
To talk a lot in an annoying, noisy way
1
8.4
To talk without stopping in an annoying way
1
7.9
To talk quickly and unclearly so others cannot understand you
1
8.7
To talk for a long time in a noisy, excited way about small things
To talk quickly and without stopping about unimportant things
To talk a lot about unimportant things
To talk for a long time in a casual or boring way
To talk for a long time about unimportant things in a silly way
To talk a lot in a silly, pointless way
Antonyms
How Talkative
- Informal
1
9.1
- Informal
15
6.2
∞
1.0
- Informal
269
1.0
586
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'yack' already encodes speaking continuously in a tiresome way and the adverb 'away' simply adds the sense of continued or ongoing action; together they yield the predictable meaning 'talk incessantly'. The V + away pattern is productive in English and follows a transparent compositional rule, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Yack away comes from the noisy word yack, which copies quick, chatty speech, and away, which shows doing something without stopping. One popular idea is that the picture of constant chattering made yack away mean 'to talk endlessly' or 'to talk in a tiresome way'.