"make conversation" meaning in English

See make conversation in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: makes conversation [present, singular, third-person], making conversation [participle, present], made conversation [participle, past], made conversation [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|make<,,made> conversation}} make conversation (third-person singular simple present makes conversation, present participle making conversation, simple past and past participle made conversation)
  1. To talk with someone out of courtesy, to pass time, or in an effort to engage with them socially. Categories (topical): Talking Related terms: small talk, shoot the breeze Translations (to talk with someone out of courtesy): keskustella (Finnish), jutella (Finnish), rupatella (Finnish), faire la conversation (French), fare conversazione (Italian)
    Sense id: en-make_conversation-en-verb-1k5xe1VB Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for make conversation meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "makes conversation",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "making conversation",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made conversation",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made conversation",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "make<,,made> conversation"
      },
      "expansion": "make conversation (third-person singular simple present makes conversation, present participle making conversation, simple past and past participle made conversation)",
      "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": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Talking",
          "orig": "en:Talking",
          "parents": [
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "Human",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1923, Max Brand, chapter 18, in The Quest of Lee Garrison, New York: Leisure Books, published 1999, page 135",
          "text": "Lee felt that disaster lurked ahead, and he did his best to stave it off by making conversation.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1948, Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter, London: Heinemann, Part Two, Chapter 1, section 3, p. 208",
          "text": "[…] mechanically like a hostess whose mind is elsewhere but who must make conversation with however uninteresting a guest, she said, ‘Pretty girl, jig jig, one pound.’",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn, New York: Scribner, published 2015, page 30",
          "text": "One day, when a neighbour called and sat in the kitchen with them having tea, Eilis realized that her mother and Rose were doing everything to hide their feelings. The neighbour, almost casually, as a way of making conversation, said: “You’ll miss her when she's gone, I'd say.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To talk with someone out of courtesy, to pass time, or in an effort to engage with them socially."
      ],
      "id": "en-make_conversation-en-verb-1k5xe1VB",
      "links": [
        [
          "talk",
          "talk"
        ],
        [
          "courtesy",
          "courtesy"
        ],
        [
          "engage",
          "engage"
        ],
        [
          "socially",
          "socially"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "small talk"
        },
        {
          "word": "shoot the breeze"
        }
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
          "word": "keskustella"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
          "word": "jutella"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
          "word": "rupatella"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
          "word": "faire la conversation"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
          "word": "fare conversazione"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "make conversation"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "makes conversation",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "making conversation",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made conversation",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made conversation",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "make<,,made> conversation"
      },
      "expansion": "make conversation (third-person singular simple present makes conversation, present participle making conversation, simple past and past participle made conversation)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "small talk"
    },
    {
      "word": "shoot the breeze"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:Talking"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1923, Max Brand, chapter 18, in The Quest of Lee Garrison, New York: Leisure Books, published 1999, page 135",
          "text": "Lee felt that disaster lurked ahead, and he did his best to stave it off by making conversation.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1948, Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter, London: Heinemann, Part Two, Chapter 1, section 3, p. 208",
          "text": "[…] mechanically like a hostess whose mind is elsewhere but who must make conversation with however uninteresting a guest, she said, ‘Pretty girl, jig jig, one pound.’",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn, New York: Scribner, published 2015, page 30",
          "text": "One day, when a neighbour called and sat in the kitchen with them having tea, Eilis realized that her mother and Rose were doing everything to hide their feelings. The neighbour, almost casually, as a way of making conversation, said: “You’ll miss her when she's gone, I'd say.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To talk with someone out of courtesy, to pass time, or in an effort to engage with them socially."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "talk",
          "talk"
        ],
        [
          "courtesy",
          "courtesy"
        ],
        [
          "engage",
          "engage"
        ],
        [
          "socially",
          "socially"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
      "word": "keskustella"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
      "word": "jutella"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
      "word": "rupatella"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
      "word": "faire la conversation"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "to talk with someone out of courtesy",
      "word": "fare conversazione"
    }
  ],
  "word": "make conversation"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.