"chew the fat" meaning in English

See chew the fat in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-chew the fat.ogg [Australia] Forms: chews the fat [present, singular, third-person], chewing the fat [participle, present], chewed the fat [participle, past], chewed the fat [past]
Etymology: One of the possible origins is from the fact that after a meal people would go into their sitting room with their guests and chit chat while chewing on the fat left over from a meal. Another possibility comes from sailors who often had salted beef and pork on long voyages and the fat would harden. Sailors would eat and complain about the hard life of the sea while "chewing the fat" Probably just from comparison of the jaw movements in chewing to the jaw movements in talking. Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} chew the fat (third-person singular simple present chews the fat, present participle chewing the fat, simple past and past participle chewed the fat)
  1. (informal) To chat idly or generally waste time talking. Tags: informal Categories (topical): Talking Synonyms: chew the rag, shoot the breeze, shoot the shit [vulgar], shoot the bull, throw the bull Related terms: chew the cud

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for chew the fat meaning in English (3.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "One of the possible origins is from the fact that after a meal people would go into their sitting room with their guests and chit chat while chewing on the fat left over from a meal.\nAnother possibility comes from sailors who often had salted beef and pork on long voyages and the fat would harden. Sailors would eat and complain about the hard life of the sea while \"chewing the fat\"\nProbably just from comparison of the jaw movements in chewing to the jaw movements in talking.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "chews the fat",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "chewing the fat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "chewed the fat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "chewed the fat",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "chew the fat (third-person singular simple present chews the fat, present participle chewing the fat, simple past and past participle chewed the fat)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English predicates",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Talking",
          "orig": "en:Talking",
          "parents": [
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "Human",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We're not supposed to waste time chewing the fat with the customers.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To chat idly or generally waste time talking."
      ],
      "id": "en-chew_the_fat-en-verb-~Vo9b8E~",
      "links": [
        [
          "chat",
          "chat"
        ],
        [
          "idly",
          "idly"
        ],
        [
          "waste time",
          "waste time"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) To chat idly or generally waste time talking."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "chew the cud"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "chew the rag"
        },
        {
          "word": "shoot the breeze"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "vulgar"
          ],
          "word": "shoot the shit"
        },
        {
          "word": "shoot the bull"
        },
        {
          "word": "throw the bull"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-chew the fat.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/75/En-au-chew_the_fat.ogg/En-au-chew_the_fat.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/En-au-chew_the_fat.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "chew the fat"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "One of the possible origins is from the fact that after a meal people would go into their sitting room with their guests and chit chat while chewing on the fat left over from a meal.\nAnother possibility comes from sailors who often had salted beef and pork on long voyages and the fat would harden. Sailors would eat and complain about the hard life of the sea while \"chewing the fat\"\nProbably just from comparison of the jaw movements in chewing to the jaw movements in talking.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "chews the fat",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "chewing the fat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "chewed the fat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "chewed the fat",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "chew the fat (third-person singular simple present chews the fat, present participle chewing the fat, simple past and past participle chewed the fat)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "chew the cud"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English predicates",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "en:Talking"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We're not supposed to waste time chewing the fat with the customers.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To chat idly or generally waste time talking."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "chat",
          "chat"
        ],
        [
          "idly",
          "idly"
        ],
        [
          "waste time",
          "waste time"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) To chat idly or generally waste time talking."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "chew the rag"
        },
        {
          "word": "shoot the breeze"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "vulgar"
          ],
          "word": "shoot the shit"
        },
        {
          "word": "shoot the bull"
        },
        {
          "word": "throw the bull"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-chew the fat.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/75/En-au-chew_the_fat.ogg/En-au-chew_the_fat.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/En-au-chew_the_fat.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "chew the fat"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.