palaver · /pəˈlɑ:və(r)/ · /pə-LAH-və(r)/. noun or verb. Tedious, pointless work. a meeting or conference. Voluminous, idle talk. Flattery. In West Africa, a dispute. From Portuguese palavra (speech, talk), from (via metathesis) Late Latin parabola (speech), from Latin parabola(comparison).
“Margarita Nikolaevna finally got tired of listening to this mysterious palaver about a head stolen from a coffin…” (Mikhail Bulgakov)
“For reasons that will bear deep scrutiny, the world hates and fears a man who makes a palaver of his private parts.” (Howard Jacobson)
“They inhabited a marketplace of vanity and grime: the endless clack of the dirty horsecars, the slop on the cobblestones, the poverty, the crime, the pain, the jockeying and the mealymouthed palaver of Boston…” (Brenda Wineapple)
“The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.” (James Joyce)
“Through the trees there is the sound of the wind, palavering.” (Mary Oliver)
“What I hear scraping at the door
Is palaver of multitudes who decided to come back…”
(John Ashbery)“To the ironized, reference-peppered palaver which comprises Dylan’s only easy mode of talk former prep-school girls have frequently proved deaf as cats.” (Jonathan Lethem)
“He often asked them to hold such palavers, as he called them. Okonkwo was among the six leaders he invited.” (Chinua Achebe)
“Normally I dream the good citizen’s mumbo jumbo of the day’s palaver and anxieties, mixed with whatever hints from the vesicles are at hand.” (Hortense Calisher)
“In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay’s grave…”
(Carol Ann Duffy)“So why not go to the hospital and have myself checked out so that we could avoid the palaver of contraception?” (Geoff Dyer)
“Now no man may call a palaver of all small chiefs unless he notifies the government of his intention…” (Edgar Wallace)