chat

Etymology 1

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

verb

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.
   We would get totally stoned and usually drunk too and chat a load of nonsense into the small hours. 2014, Lenny Smith, Choices, page 43
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?

noun

1. (countable, uncountable) Informal conversation.
   Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub. 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess
   It'd be cool to meet up again soon and have a quick chat.
   1. A conversation to stop an argument or settle a situation.
2. An exchange of text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, resembling a face-to-face conversation.
3. (Internet) A chat room.
   While there are chats for various interest groups (games, Internet, sports), you can also […] 1997, Meg Booker, The Insider's Guide to America Online, page 256
4. (metonymically, typically with definite article, video games) The entirety of users in a chat room or a single member thereof.
   The Chat just made a joke about my poor skillz.
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.

Etymology 2

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

noun

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

Etymology 3

Unknown.

noun

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

Etymology 4

From thieves' cant.

noun

1. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, World War I military slang) A louse (small, parasitic insect).
   '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.' 1977, Mary Emily Pearce, Apple Tree Lean Down, page 520
   May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write. 2007, How Can I Sleep when the Seagull Calls?, page 18
   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. 2013, Graham Seal, The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War, page 149

Etymology 5

noun

1. Alternative form of chaat