Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • In the Bible, a city (now thought to be Babylon) in Shinar where God confounded a presumptuous attempt to build a tower into heaven by confusing the language of its builders into many mutually incomprehensible languages.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun The city and tower in the land of Shinar where the confusion of languages took place, according to the Bible.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin Babel, from Hebrew בבל ("Babylon"), from Akkadian  (bāb ili, "gate of God"); in Genesis associated with the idea of confusion.

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