These words refer to the tendency or ability to talk smoothly, readily, tediously, continually or at length. Talkative is relatively informal and, most often, neutral in tone. It describes a person who is easily engaged in conversation or is given to expressing himself verbally with little prompting. Context can make the word negative: a talkative bore. More commonly, it is descriptively neutral or even approving. When the latter is true, the word may suggest an outgoing sociable person: good to be among people who were friendly and talkative after facing the hostile silence of the villagers all day. Gabby and magging are the least formal of these words. When used in reference to compulsive talkers, they are firmly negative in tone: a lot of gabby women exchanging the latest gossip; magging housewives who never leave the telephone. Sometimes they can be used without harsh intent, when meant humorously or in self-deprecation: missing the gabby sessions he’d enjoyed at boarding-school; apologizing for having been so gabby . Magging also can be good-humoured, but in this and its other sense it is most frequently used in the noun form: nothing like a good mag over a cup of tea. Chatty , also informal, is not so negative in tone as gabby or magging . It implies the good-natured imparting of relatively unimportant news and is particularly feminine in its associations: a chatty women’s magazine; a chatty afternoon-tea party.

Voluble and glib pertain specifically to the ease with which someone is able to converse or speak. Of moderate formality, voluble once pointed to a pleasing facility in speech, gesture, manners and writing; now it pertains more strictly to free-and-easy verbal smoothness. It may be approving in tone or indulgently critical: a beautifully modulated voice that contributed to the impression he made of being a voluble speaker; a voluble neighbour, always eager to tell me the local gossip. Glib , by contrast, is more harshly and consistently negative in tone, referring to a smooth, slick and possibly vulgar way of speaking, as one adopted to mask insincerity, superficiality or dishonesty: the glib flattery doled out at business cocktail parties; a student free with glib answers but lacking thoughtfulness; glib door-to-door salesmen.

Unlike the previous pair, loquacious and garrulous are less concerned with verbal smoothness than with talk that is incessant or lengthy. Of the two, loquacious is less clear-cut in tone. When positive, it serves as an intensification of the favourable implications of talkative , with a suggestion of the fluency implicit in voluble : a earnest and loquacious advocate of open-plan architecture. When negative in tone, it can suggest an overbearing insistence on holding forth without regard for one’s listeners: loquacious public speaker who always exceeded the time allotted for his speech. Garrulous is wholly negative in tone and as such is an intensification of the negative possibilities in loquacious . The word suggests a non-stop talker who is rambling, wordy, possibly foolish and usually tedious. It suggests someone who is unable to be concise or who insists on monopolizing conversations: a garrulous old man who kept interrupting their chat with lengthy accounts of his latest fishing trip.