small talk - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

small talk (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Idle conversation, typically regarding 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[1], archived from the original on 19 September 2010:
      Yet for so public a figure, Jackson was socially awkward, inept at small talk and terrified when the distant audience became an adoring mob.

idle conversation

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