SMALL TALK

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does small talk mean? 

• SMALL TALK (noun)
  The noun SMALL TALK has 1 sense:

1. light informal conversation for social occasions

  Familiarity information: SMALL TALK used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SMALL TALK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Light informal conversation for social occasions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

causerie; chin-wag; chin-wagging; chin wag; chin wagging; chit-chat; chit chat; chitchat; gab; gabfest; gossip; small talk; tittle-tattle

Hypernyms ("small talk" is a kind of...):

chat; confab; confabulation; schmoose; schmooze (an informal conversation)

 Context examples 

I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of small talk.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Without studying the business, however, or knowing what he was about, Edmund was beginning, at the end of a week of such intercourse, to be a good deal in love; and to the credit of the lady it may be added that, without his being a man of the world or an elder brother, without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)