βαττολογέω

From the study of Matthew 6:7

Range of meaning

To babble, prattle, talk on without substance; to utter empty or meaningless words. The second half, -logeō, means 'to speak'. The first half, batta-, almost certainly imitates the sound of stammering or meaningless syllables, much like English 'babble' or 'blah-blah'.

Against the English

KJV/WEB/YLT: 'use vain repetitions'; BSB: 'babble on'; NIV: 'keep on babbling'; ESV: 'heap up empty phrases'; NASB: 'meaningless repetition'. The 'repetition' renderings narrow a word about empty, run-on talk into a word about saying the same thing more than once.

How it drifted

The English Geneva Bible (1560) used 'vaine repetitions' and the KJV kept it. In the Reformation it fitted the debate against Latin prayers recited by people who did not understand them. Since then the phrase has been heard as a ban on repetition as such. Earlier English versions were closer: Tyndale (1526) had 'babble not much'.

Used elsewhere in the period

This is its first known use in Greek literature. Apart from writers who depend on this verse, the related noun battologia turns up much later, for example in Simplicius's 6th-century commentary on Epictetus (cited in BDAG). Classical Greek had battarizō, 'to stammer, to babble' (LSJ). Herodotus (4.155) tells of Battos, a stammering founder of Cyrene, and ancient writers linked 'babble' words to that name. The Latin Vulgate translates 'nolite multum loqui', 'do not speak much', so Jerome understood it as quantity of talk. The verse explains the word itself in the next clause: polylogia, 'much speaking'.