chit-chatnouninformal

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to talk to someone
talkA group of men were talking in the street.
speakCould I speak to you privately?
sayI couldn't hear what they were saying.
chatWe were just chatting about the party.
have a chatWe had a little chat over the garden wall.
chatterThey spent the morning chattering away.
a discussion that involves sending messages over the internet, by phone, using a messaging service, etc.: （在网络上或通过电话）发短信（聊天）
How do I start a group chat?怎么才能开始群聊？
I'll come by your house one day this week and we can have a chat.
We had a real girlie chat.
I was just passing by , so I thought I'd drop in for a chat.
Our little chat has raised my spirits .
She's always on the run and never has time for a chat.她总是忙个不停，连闲聊一会儿的工夫都没有。

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Informal talking & conversation
a problem shared is a problem halvedidiom
bantering
banteringly
bants
bloviate
bull session
buzz
catch
chew the fatidiom
conversation
conversational
gambit
palaver
patter
persiflage
put the world to rightsidiom
shoot
speech
take/lead someone on/to one sideidiom
tête-à-tête

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Communications - general words

chat | American Dictionary

chat
verb[ I ]
us/tʃæt/-tt-
to talk to someone in a friendly informal way:
We stopped to chat with the neighbors.

chatty

adjectiveus/ˈtʃæt̬·i/
I sat next to a friendly, chatty woman.
chat
noun[ C ]
us/tʃæt/
a friendly, informal talk:
Sometimes Don would just stop by for a chat.
Call me sometime tomorrow and we can have a chat.

chat | Business English

chat
verb[ I ]
uk /tʃæt/us-tt-
to talk to someone in a friendly informal way:
Apart from discussing official business, it was extremely useful to chat informally about work.
INTERNET, COMMUNICATIONS
to have a conversation with another person or other people on the internet, when you write down what you want to say, and can see immediately what the other person or other people are writing:
I got a message saying that she was available to chat.
chat
noun
uk /tʃæt/us
[ C or U ]
a friendly informal conversation:
have a chat with sbI had a chat with my boss today about a possible change of role.
It was just the usual idle chat, about nothing of great importance.
[ U ] INTERNET, COMMUNICATIONS
communication between people on the internet, when they can see immediately what the other person or other people are writing:
a chat site/session

Examples of chat

chat
This would be comparable to whispering in someone's ear in a face-to-face conversation, but these private messages are not recorded in the chat log.
Most of his visits were for social reasons : company, a chat, and occasional help with cooking.
It would then be interesting to have a chat-room on another site which discussed and voted for favourites.
He spends much time chatting in the street and is never lonely.
But in interactive e-mail, sender and recipient can instead prearrange a 'chat' at their keyboards in what computerese dubs 'real time'.
Hospitable and friendly, they invited us to their home for a chat.
A special newsgroup was set up, in preference to a 'chat' or email facility, in order to optimise the conditions for collective, structured, asynchronous communication.
The chat logs were collected and analysed via descriptive statistics and discourse analysis.
I contend that it was or at least it was more formal than the chat setting.
Then groups of young people played instruments informally, chatted, exchanged, toured the school, played basketball and generally and genuinely interacted.
While many people tired of the off topic chats, and some avoided the chat page when he was on, most responded to him sympathetically.
This article examines the possibilities that chat offers to foreign language learners, but because it is synchronous communication there are some practical organisational problems.
With spectacular enthusiasm she also chats about many other wartime topics: cinema, theatre, radio, sport, political rumours, social gossip and news from the battlefronts.
In ideal circumstances, meals are social occasions with a table acting as a focus for sitting and chatting while eating.
In practice, the confessorio could provide a snug and private meeting-place, in which priest and nun could chat intimately and perhaps share food and drink.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.