talk
Noun · VerbOpen English WordNet
Verb (6)talks, talked, talking
- exchange thoughts; talk with“We often talk business”“Actions talk louder than words”Synonyms: speakMore general communicate, intercommunicateMore specific continue, converse, chat up, spiel, orate, rap, monologuize, talk turkey, hold forth, level +5 more
- express in speech“She talks a lot of nonsense”“This depressed patient does not verbalize”Synonyms: speakuttermouthverbalizeverbaliseMore general communicate, intercommunicateMore specific shout, sing, mumble, deliver, whisper, read, murmur, snap, talk of, begin +31 moreSimilar verbalize, verbalise
- use language“the baby talks already”“the prisoner won't speak”“they speak a strange dialect”Synonyms: speakMore general communicate, intercommunicateMore specific run on, slang, smatter
- reveal information“If you don't oblige me, I'll talk!”“The former employee spilled all the details”Synonyms: spillMore general tellSimilar spill the beans, let the cat out of the bag
- divulge confidential information or secrets“Be careful — his secretary talks”Synonyms: spill the beanslet the cat out of the bagtattleblabpeachbabblesingbabble outblab outMore general unwrap, discloseSimilar spill
- deliver a lecture or talk“She will talk at Rutgers next week”“Did you ever lecture at Harvard?”Synonyms: lectureMore general teach, learnMore specific preach, prophesy
Noun (5)talks
- an exchange of ideas via conversation“let's have more work and less talk around here”Synonyms: talkingType of conversationKinds dialogue, yak, cant, shmooze, wind, shop talk, heart-to-heart
- discussion; (‘talk about’ is a less formal alternative for ‘discussion of’)“his poetry contains much talk about love and anger”Type of discussion, treatmentKinds real talk
- the act of giving a talk to an audience“I attended an interesting talk on local history”Type of lecture, lecturingKinds chalk talk
- a speech that is open to the public“he attended a lecture on telecommunications”Synonyms: lecturepublic lectureType of address, speech
- idle gossip or rumor“there has been talk about you lately”Synonyms: talk of the townType of gossip, comment
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Translations
Verb to communicate by speech
- Spanish
- hablar
- French
- parler
- German
- reden
- Italian
- parlare
- Portuguese
- conversar
- Turkish
- konuşmak
- Russian
- разгова́ривать razgovárivatʹ
- Arabic
- تَكَلَّمَ takallama
- Chinese
- 说话 shuōhuà
- Japanese
- 話す hanasu
36 more languages
- Dutch
- praten
- Polish
- rozmawiać
- Swedish
- prata
- Greek
- μιλώ miló
- Korean
- 이야기하다 iyagihada
- Indonesian
- berbincang
- Vietnamese
- nói chuyện
- Hungarian
- beszélget
- Portuguese (PT)
- falar
- Chinese (Trad.)
- 說話 shuōhuà
- Albanian
- bisedoj
- Breton
- kaozeal
- Catalan
- parlar
- Corsican
- parlà
- Czech
- hovořit
- Danish
- snakke
- Esperanto
- paroli
- Estonian
- rääkima
- Finnish
- puhua
- Georgian
- საუბარი saubari
- Hebrew
- דִּבֵּר dibér
- Icelandic
- tala
- Kurdish
- axaftin
- Latvian
- runāt
- Lithuanian
- kalbėti
- Malagasy
- miteny
- Norwegian
- snakke
- Romanian
- vorbi
- Scottish Gaelic
- bruidhinn
- Serbo-Croatian
- razgovarati
- Slovak
- rozprávať sa
- Slovenian
- govoriti
- Swahili
- kuzungumza
- Walloon
- djåzer
- Welsh
- siarad
- Yiddish
- רעדן redn
Noun conversation, chat
- German
- Gespräch
- Italian
- conversazione
- Portuguese
- conversa
- Russian
- разгово́р razgovór
- Arabic
- مُحَادَثَة muḥādaṯa
- Chinese
- 谈话 tánhuà
- Japanese
- 会話 kaiwa
- Dutch
- gesprek
- Polish
- rozmowa
- Swedish
- konversation
16 more languages
Noun meeting, negotiation
- German
- Unterredung
- Hungarian
- megbeszélés
- Yiddish
- שמועסן shmuesn
The main translation for each meaning, from the langtolang.com multilingual dictionary. Each word links to its full entry there.
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: Cf. LG. talk talk, gabble, Prov. G. talken to speak indistinctly; or OD. tolken to interpret, MHG. tolkan to interpret, to tell, to speak indistinctly, Dan. tolke to interpret, Sw. tolka, Icel. tūlka to interpret, tūlkr an interpreter, Lith. tulkas an interpreter, tulkanti, tulkōti, to interpret, Russ. tolkovate to interpret, to talk about; or perhaps fr. OE. talien to speak (see tale, intransitive verb & noun).
1. To utter words; esp., to converse familiarly; to speak, as in familiar discourse, when two or more persons interchange thoughts.
I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you.— William Shakespeare
2. To confer; to reason; to consult.
Let me talk with thee of thy judgments.— Jer. xii. 1.
3. To prate; to speak impertinently. colloquial
To talk of, to relate; to tell; to give an account of; as, authors talk of the wonderful remains of Palmyra. “The natural histories of Switzerland talk much of the fall of these rocks, and the great damage done.” Joseph Addison — To talk to, to advise or exhort, or to reprove gently; as, I will talk to my son respecting his conduct. colloquial
1. To speak freely; to use for conversing or communicating; as, to talk French.
2. To deliver in talking; to speak; to utter; to make a subject of conversation; as, to talk nonsense; to talk politics.
3. To consume or spend in talking; — often followed by away; as, to talk away an evening.
4. To cause to be or become by talking. “They would talk themselves mad.” William Shakespeare
To talk over. (a) To talk about; to have conference respecting; to deliberate upon; to discuss; as, to talk over a matter or plan. (b) To change the mind or opinion of by talking; to convince; as, to talk over an opponent.
1. The act of talking; especially, familiar converse; mutual discourse; that which is uttered, especially in familiar conversation, or the mutual converse of two or more.
In various talk the instructive hours they passed.— Alexander Pope
Their talk, when it was not made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and curses.— Thomas Babington Macaulay
2. Report; rumor; as, to hear talk of war.
I hear a talk up and down of raising our money.— John Locke
3. Subject of discourse; as, his achievement is the talk of the town.
Synonyms: Conversation; colloquy; discourse; chat; dialogue; conference; communication. See Conversation.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
<chat, tool, networking, messaging> A Unix program and protocol supporting conversation between two or more users who may be logged into the same computer or different computers on a network. Variants include ntalk, ytalk, and ports or emulators of these programs for other platforms.
Unix has the talk program and protocol and its variants xtalk and ytalk for the X Window System; VMS has phone; Windows for Workgroups has chat. ITS also has a talk system. These split the screen into separate areas for each user.
Unix's write command can also be used, though it does not attempt to separate input and output on the screen.
Users of such systems are said to be in talk mode which has many conventional abbreviations and idioms. Most of these survived into chat jargon, but many fell out of common use with the migration of user prattle from talk-like systems to chat systems in the early 1990s. These disused talk-specific forms include:
"BYE?" - are you ready to close the conversation? This is the standard way to end a talk-mode conversation; the other person types "BYE" to confirm, or else continues the conversation.
"JAM"/"MIN" - just a minute
"O" - "over" (I have stopped talking). Also "/" as in x/y - x over y, or two newlines (the latter being the most common).
"OO" - "over and out" - end of conversation.
"\" - Greek lambda.
"R U THERE?" - are you there?
"SEC" - wait a second.
"/\/\/" - laughter. But on a MUD, this usually means "earthquake fault".
See also talk bomb.
(1998-01-25)