Chat \Chat\, n.
1. A twig, cone, or little branch. See Chit.
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2. pl. (Mining) Small stones with ore.
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Chat potatoes, small potatoes, such as are given to swine.
[Local.]
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Chat \Chat\ (ch[a^]t), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Chatted; p. pr. &
vb. n. Chatting.] [From Chatter. [root]22.]
To talk in a light and familiar manner; to converse without
form or ceremony; to gossip. --Shak.
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To chat a while on their adventures. --Dryden.
Syn: To talk; chatter; gossip; converse.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Chat \Chat\, v. t.
To talk of. [Obs.]
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Chat \Chat\, n.
1. Light, familiar talk; conversation; gossip.
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Snuff, or fan, supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
--Pope.
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2. (Zool.) A bird of the genus Icteria, allied to the
warblers, in America. The best known species are the
yellow-breasted chat ({Icteria viridis), and the
long-tailed chat ({Icteria longicauda). In Europe the
name is given to several birds of the family
Saxicolid[ae], as the stonechat, and whinchat.
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Bush chat. (Zool.) See under Bush.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
chat
n 1: an informal conversation [syn: confab, confabulation, schmooze,
schmoose]
2: birds having a chattering call [syn: New World chat]
3: songbirds having a chattering call [syn: Old World chat]
v : talk socially without exchanging too much information; "the
men were sitting in the cafe and shooting the breeze"
[syn: chew the fat, shoot the breeze, confabulate,
confab, chitchat, chatter, chaffer, natter, gossip,
jaw, claver, visit]
[also: chatting, chatted]
WordNet (r) 2.0
111 Moby Thesaurus words for "chat":
babble, babblement, bavardage, be closeted with, bibble-babble,
blab, blabber, blah-blah, blather, blether, blethers, bull session,
bullshit, burble, cackle, caquet, caqueterie, causerie, chatter,
chew the fat, chin, chitter-chatter, clack, clatter, colloque,
colloquy, compare, confab, confabulate, confabulation,
conversation, converse, coze, cozy chat, dialogue, dish, dither,
entice, flirt with, friendly chat, gab, gabble, gam, gas, gibber,
gibble-gabble, go on, gossip, guff, gush, haver, heart-to-heart,
heart-to-heart talk, hot air, idle talk, induce, inveigle, jabber,
jaw, lallygag, little talk, lure, make conversation, mere talk,
natter, nonsense talk, palaver, parley, patter, persuade,
pour forth, prate, prating, prattle, prevail upon, prittle-prattle,
proposition, prose, ramble on, rap, rap session, rattle, rattle on,
reel off, run on, seduce, shoot the breeze, small talk, smatter,
spout, spout off, talk, talk away, talk nonsense, talk on,
talkee-talkee, tempt, tete-a-tete, tinkle, tittle-tattle, twaddle,
twattle, twiddle, twitter, visit, waffle, yak, yakkety-yak, yammer,
yap, yarn
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
chat
Any system that allows any
number of logged-in users to have a typed, real-time, on-line
conversation, either by all users logging into the same
computer, or more commonly nowadays, via a network.
The medium of chat is descended from talk, but the terms
(and the media) have been distinct since at least the early
1990s. talk is prototypically for a small number of people,
generally with no provision for channels. In chat
systems, however, there are many channels in which any
number of people can talk; and users may send private
(one-to-one) messages.
Some well known chat systems to date (1998) include IRC,
ICQ and Palace.
Chat systems have given rise to a distinctive style combining
the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and
verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to
communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen to help
with this.
The conventions of chat systems include special items of
jargon, generally abbreviations meant to save typing, which
are not used orally. E.g., re, BCNU, BBL, BTW, CUL,
FWIW, FYA, FYI, IMHO, OTT, TNX, WRT, WTF,
WTH, , , BBL, HHOK, NHOH, ROTFL, AFK,
b4, TTFN, TTYL, OIC, re.
Much of the chat style is identical to (and probably derived
from) Morse code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the
1920s, and there is, not surprisingly, some overlap with TDD
jargon. Most of the jargan was in use in talk systems.
Many of these expressions are also common in Usenet news
and electronic mail and some have seeped into popular
culture, as with emoticons.
The MUD community uses a mixture of emoticons, a few of
the more natural of the old-style talk mode abbreviations,
and some of the "social" list above; specifically, MUD
respondents report use of BBL, BRB, LOL, b4, BTW,
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
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