Without words and almost with the seriousness of asylum nurses they at once set upon an unsavoury-looking matron who began to cry out Mediterranean vocables of distress.
1925, John Buchan, "The House of the Four Winds":
At first the man puzzled; then he smiled. He pronounced a string of uncouth vocables.
puhekieltä A syllable or sound without specific meaning, used together with or in place of actual words in a song.
Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Native American Music;
Many Native American songs employ vocables, syllables that do not have referential meaning. These may be used to frame words or may be inserted among them; in some cases, they constitute the entire song text.