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enthusiast
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OP
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Is there a single word for (noun) "someone who speaks irrelevantly"?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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must resist temptation...
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Eta ~ If you are not good, Santa will put a lump of coal in your stocking. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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blabbermouth -- not precisely it, as this carries the sense of not keeping confidences.
gasbag -- still not precisely it, as this carries the sense of self-importance.
loquacious -- close but not it, as this can mean talkative without being irrelevant.
garrulous -- this might be it.
circumloqutious -- close, but carries the sense of talking all around a subject on purpose, whereas the irrelevant talker does not necessary seek to avoid direct speech.
Oops, the last three are not nouns. Oh, well.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Prattler? You may have stumbled upon another of those concepts for which there's no word
dalehileman
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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enthusiast
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OP
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Blatherskite does come close, but none of them quite hits the nail on the head. Most of the aforementioned terms basically mean "talkative", which does not necessarily mean the person at question speaks irrelevantly, just that he/she speaks a lot.
Never heard of gasbag! is that slang?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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One of Merriam's defs for prattle is meaningless or empty talk; not a perfect fit but close
dalehileman
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Carpal Tunnel
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I still think blatherskite is exactly what you asked for. Blather means to talk nonsensically (from the root word suggesting 'blowing' etc - see ref below), and skite comes from a ME word for diarrhoea from an ancient Norse word meaning shit, so a blatherskite is someone who literally talks a load of uncontrolled meaningless crap.
blather
SYLLABICATION: blath·er
PRONUNCIATION: blthr
VARIANT FORMS: also bleth·er (blth-)
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: blath·ered, blath·er·ing, blath·ers
To talk nonsensically.
NOUN: Nonsensical talk.
ETYMOLOGY: Old Norse bladhra. See bhl- in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS: blather·er —NOUN
~ copyright American Heritage AH bladder
Last edited by maverick; 11/27/05 02:03 AM.
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enthusiast
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Well, it does mean someone who talks nonsense, or empty talk; but it doesn't mean there's a topic at hand and that the person talks irrelevantly (i.e. nothing pertaining to the topic)?
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