chat

• IPA^(key): /tʃæt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æt

Abbreviation of chatter. The bird sense refers to the sound of its call.

chat (third-person singular simple present chats, present participle chatting, simple past and past participle chatted)

Two people chatting. (1) (2)

1. To be engaged in informal conversation.

   She chatted with her friend in the cafe.

   I like to chat over a coffee with a friend.

2. To talk more than a few words.

   I met my old friend in the street, so we chatted for a while.

3. (transitive) To talk of; to discuss.

   They chatted politics for a while.

   • 2014, Lenny Smith, Choices (page 43)

     We would get totally stoned and usually drunk too and chat a load of nonsense into the small hours.

4. To exchange text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, as if having a face-to-face conversation.

   Do you want to chat online later?

chat (countable and uncountable, plural chats)

1. (uncountable) Informal conversation.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess‎:

     Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub.

2. A conversation to stop an argument or settle situations.
3. (totum pro parte, always with definite article, video games) The entirety of users in a chatroom or a single member thereof.

   The Chat just made a joke about my skills.

4. An exchange of text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, resembling a face-to-face conversation.
5. Any of various small Old World passerine birds in the muscicapid tribe Saxicolini or subfamily Saxicolinae that feed on insects.
6. Any of several small Australian honeyeaters in the genus Epthianura.

Compare chit (“small piece of paper”), and chad.[1]

chat

1. A small potato, such as is given to swine.

Origin unknown.

chat (plural chats)

1. (mining, local use) Mining waste from lead and zinc mines.
   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 441:

     Frank had been looking at calcite crystals for a while now [...] among the chats or zinc tailings of the Lake County mines, down here in the silver lodes of the Vita Madre and so forth.

From thieves' cant.

• chatt

chat (plural chats)

1. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, WWI military slang) A louse (small, parasitic insect).
   • 1977, Mary Emily Pearce, Apple Tree Lean Down, page 520:

     'Do officers have chats, then, the same as us?'

     'Not the same, no. The chats they got is bigger and better, with pips on their shoulders and Sam Browne belts.'

   • 2007, How Can I Sleep when the Seagull Calls? →ISBN, page 18:

     May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write.

   • 2013, Graham Seal, The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War →ISBN, page 149:

     Trench foot was a nasty and potentially fatal foot disease commonly caused by these conditions, in which chats or body lice were the bane of all.

chat (plural chats)

1. Alternative form of chaat

• ACTH, Cath, cath, tach

From French chat.

chat

1. cat

Borrowed from English chat.

• IPA^(key): /tʃɛt/

• Audio

  (file)

chat m (plural chats, diminutive chatje n)

1. chat (online conversation)
2. chat (online conversation platform)

• chatten

chat

1. first-, second- and third-person singular present indicative of chatten
2. imperative of chatten

• acht

From Middle French chat, from Old French chat, from Late Latin cattus.

• IPA^(key): /ʃa/

• audio

  (file)

chat m (plural chats)

1. cat (feline)
   • 1910, Henry-D. Davray & B. Kozakiewicz (tr.), La Guerre dans les airs, translation of The War in the Air by H. G. Wells, page 335:

     Soudain, d’un seul élan, cela se précipita sur lui, avec un miaulement plaintif et la queue droite. C’était un jeune chat, menu et décharné, qui frottait sa tête contre les jambes de Bert, en ronronnant.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

2. (male) cat, tom, tomcat
3. tag, tig (children’s game)

• cataire
• chatte

• haret
• matou
• minet
• minou
• mistigri

Borrowed from English chat.

• IPA^(key): /tʃat/

chat m (plural chats)

1. (Internet) chat (online discussion)

• tchat

• chatter
• chater
• chatteur
• chateur

• “chat” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From Min Nan 漆 (chhat), from Middle Chinese 漆 (tsit).

chat

1. paint (substance)

• IPA^(key): /xat̪ˠ/

chat m

1. Lenited form of cat.

Borrowed from English chat.

• IPA^(key): /t͡ʃat/, [t͡ʃät̪]
• Stress: chàt

chat f (invariable)

1. chat (informal conversation via computer)

• chattare

• chiacchierata

From Somali [Term?].

• IPA^(key): /kat/

chat m (invariable)

1. chat (leaf chewed by people in North Africa and the Middle East)

• khat

From Old French chat, from Late Latin cattus.

chat m (plural chats or chatz, feminine singular chatte, feminine plural chattes)

1. cat (animal)

• French: chat

• cat (Picardy, Anglo-Norman)
• kat (Picardy, Anglo-Norman)

From Late Latin cattus.

chat m (oblique plural chaz or chatz, nominative singular chaz or chatz, nominative plural chat)

1. cat (animal)

• chate

• Middle French: chat
  • French: chat

• IPA^(key): /xat/

chat f

1. genitive plural of chata

Borrowed from English chat.

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈʃat͡ʃ(i)/, /ˈʃɛt͡ʃ(i)/

chat m (plural chats)

1. (Internet) chat (exchange of text or voice messages in real time)

• bate-papo

Borrowed from English chat.

• IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃat/, [ˈt͡ʃat̪]

chat m (plural chats)

1. chat (exchange of text or voice messages in real time through a computer network)

Borrowed from English chat

chat

1. chat