Chat
Pronunciation
- IPA: /tʃæt/
- Rhymes: -æt
Origin 1
Abbreviation of chatter. The bird sense refers to the sound of its call.
Full definition of chat
Verb
- To be engaged in informal conversation.She chatted with her friend in the cafe.I like to chat over a coffee with a friend.
- To talk more than a few words.I met my old friend in the street, so we chatted for a while.
- (transitive) To talk of; to discuss.They chatted politics for a while.
- To exchange text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, as if having a face-to-face conversation.Do you want to chat online later?
Noun
chat
(countable and uncountable; plural chats)- (uncountable) Informal conversation.
- 1963, Margery Allingham, The China Governess Chapter Foreword, Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub.
- A conversation to stop an argument or settle situations.
- An exchange of text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, resembling a face-to-face conversation.
- Any of various small Old World passerine birds in the subfamily Saxicolini that feed on insects.
Origin 2
Compare chit "small piece of paper", and chad.
William Safire, The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time, p. 43, Simon and Schuster, 2007 ISBN 1416587403.
Noun
Origin 3
Origin unknown.
Noun
chat
(plural chats)- (mining, local use) Mining waste from lead and zinc mines.
- 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 441:Frank had been looking at calcite crystals for a while now ... among the chats or zinc tailings of the Lake County mines, down here in the silver lodes of the Vita Madre and so forth.
Origin 4
From thieves' cant.
Alternative forms
Noun
chat
(plural chats)- (British, Australia, NZ, WWI military slang) A louse (small, parasitic insect).
- 1977, Mary Emily Pearce, Apple Tree Lean Down, page 520:'Do officers have chats, then, the same as us?''Not the same, no. The chats they got is bigger and better, with pips on their shoulders and Sam Browne belts.'
- 2007, How Can I Sleep when the Seagull Calls? (ISBN 978-1-4357-1811-1), page 18:May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write.
- 2013, Graham Seal, The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War (ISBN 1137303263), page 149:Trench foot was a nasty and potentially fatal foot disease commonly caused by these conditions, in which chats or body lice were the bane of all.