Word.ws English Dictionary

small talk

small talk noun: idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.

Noun

small talk (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.
    • [T]o the credit of the lady it may be added, that […] without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her.1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Mansfield Park: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 134
    • If he had a fault as a conversationalist, it was a certain tendency to monotony, a certain lack of sparkle and variety in his small-talk.1910, P. G. Wodehouse, Misunderstood

small talk meaning in Malayalam, Kannada and Arabic

small talk in Malayalam

small talk, chatter
കുശലാന്വേഷണം kuśalānvēṣaṇaṁ

small talk in Kannada

ಕಾಡುಹರಟೆ, ಸಣ್ಣಮಾತು, ಚಿಲ್ಲರೆಮಾತು, ವ್ಯರ್ಥಮಾತು, ಚಿಲ್ಲರೆಹರಟೆ

small talk in Arabic

idle conversation
كَلَام خَفِيف kalām ḵafīf, مُحَادَثَة خَفِيفَة muḥādaṯa ḵafīfa

Synonyms of small talk

Forms of small talk

alternative formsmall-talk
alternative formsmalltalk

Words formed from small talk

Questions about small talk

What does small talk mean?
Small talk means idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.
What is small talk in Malayalam?
Small talk in Malayalam is കുശലാന്വേഷണം (kuśalānvēṣaṇaṁ). See Small talk meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is small talk?
Small talk is a noun.

Words near small talk in the dictionary

  1. small slam
  2. small slams
  3. small Solar System bodies
  4. small Solar System body
  5. small stuff
  6. small talk
  7. small text
  8. small time
  9. small tortoiseshell
  10. small tortoiseshells
  11. small town

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: small talk (page history and authors); കുശലാന്വേഷണം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); small talk (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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-au-small talk.ogg.

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