CONVERSATION • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Conversation

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/kˌɑnvərsˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Conversation n.

1.

General course of conduct; behavior. (Archaic) "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel."

2.

Familiar intercourse; intimate fellowship or association; close acquaintance. "Conversation with the best company." "I set down, out of long experience in business and much conversation in books, what I thought pertinent to this business."

3.

Commerce; intercourse; traffic. (Obs.) "All traffic and mutual conversation."

4.

Colloquial discourse; oral interchange of sentiments and observations; informal dialogue. "The influence exercised by his (Johnson's) conversation was altogether without a parallel."

5.

Sexual intercourse; as, criminal conversation.

Synonyms: Intercourse; communion; commerce; familiarity; discourse; dialogue; colloquy; talk; chat. Conversation, Talk. There is a looser sense of these words, in which they are synonymous; there is a stricter sense, in which they differ. Talk is usually broken, familiar, and versatile. Conversation is more continuous and sustained, and turns ordinarily upon topics or higher interest. Children talk to their parents or to their companions; men converse together in mixed assemblies. Dr. Johnson once remarked, of an evening spent in society, that there had been a great deal of talk, but no conversation.

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Etymology of 'Conversation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Conversation" Quotes from Famous Books

... The conversation was interrupted by the screeching of a cockatoo on a stand in the back of the cabin. Until then Frederick had not ...

— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen's club across the Park, watching eagerly the "shocking," "shameless" women at the gates of the White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating! This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were American women before their very eyes daring to shock them into having to think about liberty. And what was worse-liberty for women. ...

— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... at the touch of lightness the biophysicist had injected into the conversation. "Very well. I could do with some coffee, ...

— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Will's[8], and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's[8], and, whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman[9], overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's[8] coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian[8], the Cocoa-Tree, and ...

— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... sentence to sentence, more or less rapidly according to the class, a stock of words is soon acquired, reading, writing, and conversation become easy, and in a very short time the pupils, encouraged to guess at the meaning of new words, become entirely independent of vocabulary or dictionary. In concluding the lesson, the story is told again by the teacher, quite rapidly, in the usual conversational tone, ...

— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber

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