small talk

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small talk (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) Idle conversation, typically on innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.
   • 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Mansfield Park: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 134:

     [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.

   • 1910, P. G. Wodehouse, Misunderstood:

     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.

   • 2009 June 10, John Cloud, “Michael Jackson 1958–2009”, in Time:

     Yet for so public a figure, Jackson was socially awkward, inept at small talk and terrified when the distant audience became an adoring mob.

• small-talk, smalltalk

• (idle conversation): chit-chat, pleasantries, foretalk; see also Thesaurus:chatter (meaningless types)

• Smalltalk
• small-talker

• → Finnish: smalltalk
• → German: Smalltalk
• → Polish: small talk

• big talk
• happy talk

• small talk on Wikipedia.Wikipedia