Word.ws English Dictionary

chat

UK/ˈt͡ʃæt/

chat verb: to be engaged in informal conversation. Also the alternative form of chaat.

chat: to be engaged in informal conversation
Image: Wikimania2009 Ariel Kanterewicz, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

chat (third-person singular simple present chats, present participle chatting, simple past and past participle chatted)

  1. To be engaged in informal conversation.
    • She chatted with her friend in the cafe.
    • I like to chat over a coffee with a friend.
  2. To talk a while in a friendly manner.
    • I met my old friend in the street, so we chatted for a while.
  3. (transitive) To talk of; to discuss.
    • They chatted politics for a while.
    • We would get totally stoned and usually drunk too and chat a load of nonsense into the small hours.2014, Lenny Smith, Choices, page 43
  4. (informal, often, slang) To chat shit (to speak nonsense, to lie).
    • Don't listen to me, I'm chatting.
  5. To exchange text or voice messages in real time through a computer network such as a social media chat room or messaging application (as if having a face-to-face conversation instead of SMS or writing emails or letters).
    • Do you want to chat online later?

Noun (1)

chat (countable and uncountable, plural chats)

  1. Informal conversation.
    • It'd be cool to meet up again soon and have a quick chat.
    • Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub.1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
  2. An exchange of text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, resembling a face-to-face conversation.
    • Internet Relay Chat
  3. (Internet, uncountable) A chat room, especially (in later use) one accompanying a videoconference or live stream.
    • "Type yes in (the) chat if you can hear me."
    • While there are chats for various interest groups (games, Internet, sports), you can also […]1997, Meg Booker, The Insider's Guide to America Online, page 256
    1. (Internet, metonymically) The entirety of users, viewed collectively, in a chat room, especially the chat room accompanying a live stream.
      • The chat just made a joke about my poor skillz.
      • "Chat, should I pick up this sword before heading out?"
    2. (Internet, broadly, humorous, nonstandard) Familiar term of address for users on social media other than a chat room, as in "guys."
  4. (countable) Any of various small Old World passerine birds in the muscicapid tribe Saxicolini or subfamily Saxicolinae that feed on insects.
  5. (countable) Any of several small Australian honeyeaters in the genus Epthianura.

Interjection

chat

  1. (humorous, informal) Used to introduce a question, to address all the other people present.
    • Chat, is this real?
    Synonyms:
    I don't suppose

Noun (2)

chat (plural chats)

  1. A small potato, such as is given to swine.
    • Wheat and potatoes were traditionally cash crops, though they also provided tail corn for the poultry and chats for the pigs1978, Joan Thirsk, Edith Holt Whetham, H. P. R. Finberg, The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume 8, 1914-1939, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 5

Noun (3)

chat (plural chats)

  1. (regional) Mining waste from lead and zinc mines.
    • 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.2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 441

Noun (4)

chat (plural chats)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, UK, World-War-I, slang) A louse (small, parasitic insect).
    • '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.'1977, Mary Emily Pearce, Apple Tree Lean Down, page 520
    • May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write.2007, How Can I Sleep when the Seagull Calls?, →ISBN, page 18

Noun (5) capitalized: CHAT

CHAT (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of cultural-historical activity theory.

Proper noun capitalized: Chat

Chat

  1. (slang) ChatGPT.
    • Its redundancy of creative work and in terms of chat how people can use it as a cheat basically, you don't have to do essays for school when you can ask chat to do it for you, which forces teachers to have to take this tool into account, and a kid here has said his honest essay has been flagged as...2023 August 9, u/MiguelIstNeugierig, “Give me your best yo mama jokes and chatgpt will rate them out of 10 with a review”, in Reddit, r/teenagers, archived from the original on 27 Sep 2024
    • I asked chat to pick a draft to post and it said they all suck2024 March 21, @Nexuist, Twitter, archived from the original on 27 Sep 2024
    Synonyms:
    Chatty G

Also used as

chat is also the alternative form of chaat.

chat meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

chat in Hindi

informal conversation
चर्चा carcā
exchange of text or voice messages in real time
चैट caiṭ

chat in Marathi

गप्पा मारायला

chat in Urdu

exchange of text or voice messages in real time
چَیٹ caiṭ

chat in Bengali

exchange of text or voice messages in real time
চ্যাট cêṭ
More languagesFewer languages
chat in Telugu
చాట్ చెయ్యడానికి, చాటింగ్ చేయడానికి
chat in Malayalam
ചാറ്റ് ചെയ്യാൻ, ചാറ്റ് ചെയ്യുക
chat in Kannada
ಚಾಟ್ ಮಾಡಲು, ಚಾಟಿಂಗ್ ಮಾಡಲು
chat in Gujarati
ચેટ કરવા
chat in Nepali
च्याट गर्न
chat in Tagalog
makipagchat, makipag-usap, chat
chat in Arabic
دَرْدَشَ dardaša, مُحَادَثَّة muḥādaṯṯa, دَرْدَشَة dardaša
chat in Malay
bersembang, berbual, sembang, bual
chat in Indonesian
mengobrol, kongko, obrol, obrolan
chat in Persian
گپ زدن gap zadan
chat in Thai
คุย kui, แชต chɛ̂ɛt, แชท chɛ̂ɛt
chat in Vietnamese
tán gẫu, tám, nói chuyện phiếm, trò chuyện trực tuyến
chat in Myanmar
ချတ် hkyat

Examples of chat in a sentence

  • Chat turned to whisper when the boss entered the conference room.
  • We can't chat today. I have to get my butt to work before I'm late.
  • I know you'll enjoy chatting with her — she's really funny and smart.

All 40 example sentences with chat

Synonyms of chat

12 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of chat

Forms of chat

Verb
third-person singular presentchats
present participlechatting
past participlechatted
pastchatted
Noun
pluralchats
alternative formchatt

Past tense of chat: chatted

Plural of chat: chats

Origin of chat

Clipping of chatter. The bird sense refers to the sound of its call.

Compare chit (“small piece of paper”), and chad.

Unknown.

Words formed from chat

Phrases with chat

28 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with chat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about chat

What does chat mean?
Chat means to be engaged in informal conversation.
What is chat in Hindi?
Chat in Hindi is चर्चा (carcā), चैट (caiṭ). See Chat meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is chat?
Chat can be a verb, a noun, an interjection or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce chat?
Chat is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃæt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of chat?
The past tense of chat is chatted.

Words near chat in the dictionary

  1. chastushky
  2. chasu
  3. chasuble
  4. chasubled
  5. chasubles
  6. chat
  7. chat away
  8. chat bot
  9. chat bots
  10. chat fiction
  11. chat fictions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chat (page history and authors); CHAT (page history and authors); Chat (page history and authors); chat (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); chat (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); chat (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); chat (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); chat (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); chat (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-chat.ogg, EN-AU ck1 chat.ogg.

Cite this entry: “chat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.