gurgling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of gurgle.

   The stream was gurgling over the smooth rocks below the bridge.

   We could hear the old pipes gurgling through the night.

   Note

   Two uses of gurgle sit behind this participle. The liquid itself can be gurgling, as a stream gurgles over rocks. Or something can be gurgling because liquid moves through it, as old pipes gurgle at night. Either way the verb takes no object and builds its progressive with be. The countable sound, with its plural, belongs to the noun for the sound.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A low, bubbling noise produced when liquid moves past or through air, such as water draining away or flowing over stones.

   Like the soft, rolling sound water makes as it drains from a bathtub.

   A faint gurgling rose from the half-empty bottle as he tipped it sideways.

   The gurgling of the radiator kept the whole room awake.

   Similarbubbling, burbling, babbling

   Note

   Water is the usual source, but the word stretches to any throaty, bubbling noise. Edmund Hope Verney's The Shannon's Brigade in India (1862) sets the "moanings and gurglings of camels" beside the trumpetings of elephants. The noun is countable, so separate sounds pile up as gurglings. That plural suits a catalog of noises like Verney's, where each creature adds its own.

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