For examples:
Tom is rambling in his speech
Tom is babbling in his speech
Do both of them mean the same thing if I use them in a sense to mean that someone is talking for a while in a very rapid and disconnected way.
In dictionaries I found babble and rumble hugely similar. Are there any subtle difference that native speakers may take note?
1talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish,
excited, or incomprehensible way:2talk or write at length in a confused or inconsequential way:
Best Answer
Babble and ramble are both derogatory when applied to speech or writing; but beyond that they have very little in common.
The primary sense of babble has to do with >sound<: as your dictionary tells you, it characterizes speech as “rapid and continuous”, so much so that no coherent meaning can be discerned. We use babble to speak of babies’ meaningless syllables, of mindless social chatter, of fluent but uninformed speech, and of speech in foreign languages which we do not understand. We also use the term figuratively of rapidly flowing streams: ‘babbling brooks’.
The primary sense of ramble has to do with >direction<. It was used originally of walking or travel: to wander aimlessly, going nowhere in particular. When ramble is used of speech or writing it indicates that a discourse is similarly directionless: it jumps from one point to another, with no apparent connection and no evident point towards which it is driving.
ADDED:
Incidentally, you’re very unlikely to hear or read “He is babbling in his speech.” Since you’re talking about a person, it would be taken for granted that it his speech which is involved; we‘d just say “He’s babbling.”
“He is rambling in his speech” is unlikely, too; more usual expressions are: