Talk:chat

RFV 1

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Questionable sense:

1. Slang word for distasteful or disgusting.

Rod (A. Smith) 05:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

rfvfailed. Andrew massyn 19:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Chat as an adjective: disgusting or ugly

Here in Sydney, Australia, the word "chat' can be used as an adjective for something being disgusting or ugly. There is a fairly accurate description of this word on urbandictionary.com:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chat

This word is often combined with the word "minger" (unattractive woman), to form the phrase "chat minger" (disgusting unattractive woman), mainly for emphasis. There is much evidence of this sense of the word being used on the internet, especially in informal settings such as myspace.

Quote from a comment posted on myspace: "You're a chat minger and no body likes you... No one... Especialy(sic) your mum, she hates you the most... and she is right to do so. "

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

Are we missing a noun sense - some sort of leaf that is chewed by people in North Africa and the Middle East? SemperBlotto 22:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you mean khat. It's from Arabic قات (qāt), so there are lots of alternative spellings depending on the transliteration. I don't know if chat is one of them, probably though. Nadando 23:45, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

RFV 2

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A louse. Since it's slang, I guess that's the slang meaning of louse, but either way, I don't feel competent to try and find if there are cites for British slang.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:03, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

No, "chats" were real lice in "Thieves' cant" according to the OED, but they can cite only other dictionaries. The word was still in use a hundred years ago (see firstworldwar.com: "Also commonly referred to as 'chats', Lice often spread disease, ..." and trench warfare on Schoolnet: "Lice hunting was called 'chatting'") Dbfirs 12:44, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I can find one citation which uses the term, albeit in a mention-y way:

• 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.

That book also lists some other trench jargon:

• bugwarm (“a small trench”)
• cubby hole (“a small hole dug as part of a trench”)
• funk hole (“a small hole dug as part of a trench”)
• sump hole (“a hole made in the floor of a trench for bailing out water”)
• glory hole (“a large trench, or hole dug as part of a trench”)
• sap (“a listening post beyond the front line, in no-man's land”)
• Russian sap (“an underground trench”)

- -sche (discuss) 18:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to find uses amidst all the mentions, but I think I've cited this. - -sche (discuss) 18:29, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:20, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for those excellent citations, much better than mine! (Cubby hole and glory hole are much earlier and more general, of course, and are still in use.) Dbfirs 19:37, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Duly de-tagged / passed. - -sche (discuss) 00:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

In Multicultural London English

This has a recent broader sense in MLE, technically covered by one of our definitions ("to talk of; to discuss") but used in contexts where it wouldn't be used in Standard English: e.g. "don't chat shit" (don't talk rubbish). Equinox ◑ 03:20, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Pronunciation

We have chat as an alternative form of chaat, which has pronunciation /t͡ʃɑːt/, but for chat we just have the unified pronunciation /t͡ʃæt/ (likely incorrect). So the pronunciation section probably needs to be split up so each etymology has its own. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 19:35, 3 October 2022 (UTC)