BABEL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Babel mean? 

• BABEL (noun)
  The noun BABEL has 2 senses:

1. (Genesis 11:1-11) a tower built by Noah's descendants (probably in Babylon) who intended it to reach up to heaven; God foiled them by confusing their language so they could no longer understand one another

2. a confusion of voices and other sounds

  Familiarity information: BABEL used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BABEL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(Genesis 11:1-11) a tower built by Noah's descendants (probably in Babylon) who intended it to reach up to heaven; God foiled them by confusing their language so they could no longer understand one another

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

Babel; Tower of Babel

Instance hypernyms:

ziggurat; zikkurat; zikurat (a rectangular tiered temple or terraced mound erected by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians)

Domain category:

Book of Genesis; Genesis (the first book of the Old Testament: tells of Creation; Adam and Eve; the Fall of Man; Cain and Abel; Noah and the flood; God's covenant with Abraham; Abraham and Isaac; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers)

Holonyms ("Babel" is a part of...):

Babylon (the chief city of ancient Mesopotamia and capital of the ancient kingdom of Babylonia)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A confusion of voices and other sounds

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("babel" is a kind of...):

confusion (an act causing a disorderly combination of elements with identities lost and distinctions blended)

 Context examples 

“Well, you can’t all fight him,” remarked Jackson, when the babel had died away.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

This stone was thrown at the sainted Stephen, and the other two are from the Tower of Babel.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The rhythm of “God Save the King” swelled through the babel, and I heard the old lines sung in a way that made you forget their bad rhymes and their bald sentiments.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then came archers of the guard, shrill-voiced women of the camp, English pages with their fair skins and blue wondering eyes, dark-robed friars, lounging men-at-arms, swarthy loud-tongued Gascon serving-men, seamen from the river, rude peasants of the Medoc, and becloaked and befeathered squires of the court, all jostling and pushing in an ever-changing, many-colored stream, while English, French, Welsh, Basque, and the varied dialects of Gascony and Guienne filled the air with their babel.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Out of the babel of voices and roaring of wheels outside the window a single sentence struck sharply on our ears.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From beyond it came such a Babel of hooting and screaming, horrible oaths and yet more horrible laughter, that the stoutest heart might have shrunk from casting down the frail barrier which faced them.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)