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talk

UK/tɔːk/ US/tʰoːk/ very common informal slang us
verb (6) noun (5)

verb

1.

exchange thoughts; talk with

  • “We often talk business”
  • “Actions talk louder than words”
Synonyms
2.

express in speech

  • “She talks a lot of nonsense”
  • “This depressed patient does not verbalize”
Synonyms
3.

use language

  • “the baby talks already”
  • “the prisoner won”
  • “;”
Synonyms
4.

reveal information

  • “If you don”
  • “ll talk!”
  • “The former employee spilled all the details”
Synonyms
5.
6.

deliver a lecture or talk

  • “She will talk at Rutgers next week”
  • “Did you ever lecture at Harvard?”
Synonyms

noun

1.

an exchange of ideas via conversation

  • “let”
Synonyms
2.

(`talk about'' is a less formal alternative for `discussion of'') discussion

  • “his poetry contains much talk about love and anger”
3.

the act of giving a talk to an audience

  • “I attended an interesting talk on local history”
4.

a speech that is open to the public

  • “he attended a lecture on telecommunications”
Synonyms
5.

idle gossip or rumor

  • “there has been talk about you lately”
Synonyms

Origin

From Middle English talken, talkien, from Old English *tealcian (“to talk, chat”), from Proto-West Germanic *talkōn, from Proto-Germanic *talkōną (“to talk, chatter”), frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *talōną (“to count, recount, tell”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol-, *del- (“to aim, calculate, adjust, count”), equivalent to tell + -k. Cognates Cognate with Low German taalken (“to chatter, gossip, talk”). Related also to Bavarian zoin (“to pay”), Cimbrian zaln (“to pay”), Dutch talen (“to care, long; to speak; to say”), German zahlen (“to pay”), Mòcheno zoln (“to pay”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål tale (“to talk, speak”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Swedish tala (“to speak, talk”), Norwegian Nynorsk tala (“to speak, talk”); also Latin dolus (“deceit, deception, fraud, guile, treachery, trickery; malice; artifice, device, stratagem”), Ancient Greek δόλος (dólos, “deceit, trick; wiles; bait”), Armenian տող (toġ, “line (in a text)”). More at tale. Despite the surface similarity, unrelated to Proto-Indo-European *telkʷ- (“to talk”) (due to Grimm's law), which is the source of loquacious.

Phrases

  • all talk Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • all talk and no action Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • all talk and no cider Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • all talk and trousers Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • baby talk Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • big talk Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • book talk Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • boy talk Terms derived from talk (noun)
  • crazy talk
  • hark who's talking
  • I don't want to talk about it
  • if these walls could talk

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

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See also

Related verbs

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.