small talk
"small-talk" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“small talk” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.
Corpus desk
Index EN-small-talk · small talk · English
small talk · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | small talk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “small talk” in English
Rare enough to double-check
small talk is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.".
No misspelling variants are generated for small talk in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is small talk, spelled S-M-A-L-L- -T-A-L-K.
Definition
- 1Idle conversation, typically regarding innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how small talk appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[T]o the credit of the lady it may be added, that […] without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her.
If he had a fault as a conversationalist, it was a certain tendency to monotony, a certain lack of sparkle and variety in his small-talk.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.