small talk

Definitions

Idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.

idiomatic, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“[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.”

“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.”

“Yet for so public a figure⟳, Jackson was socially awkward, inept at small talk⟳ and terrified when the distant audience became an adoring mob.”

CEFR level