The AI-powered English dictionary
plural chinwags
(Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, informal) An informal conversation, usually about everyday matters; a chat, a gossip. quotations examples
Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub.
1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus
Every major network has at least one prime-time newsmagazine, which features extended coverage of gruesome crimes or amazing trials, intimate chinwags with the stars, and exposés of the horrors lurking in your own home, […]
2005, Laura Penny, Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart, page 222
Hundreds of Reading folk got together for coffee, cake and a good old fashioned chinwag during a national cancer charity's coffee morning fundraiser.
2008 September 29, “Raising a cup for Macmillan Cancer”, in Reading Evening Post, Reading, Berkshire: Surrey & Berkshire Media, archived from the original on 3 October 2008
"I have a bone to pick with you and I can't possibly nap until we've had a jolly good chin-wag about it." / "Chin-wag?" / "A powwow. A council of war."
2014, [C.] Alan Bradley, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel, New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press
third-person singular simple present chinwags, present participle chinwagging, simple past and past participle chinwagged
(Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, informal) To chat, to gossip. quotations examples
We stamped around to get some circulation into our legs after a stint of three hours in the cold water, had a pull at a bottle of wine, and chinwagged with some of the other fishermen who were clambering out of their waders beside their parked cars.
1972 March, Keith Draper, “Big Trout are Suckers after Dark”, in Field & Stream, Los Angeles, Calif.: CBS Magazines, page 161
[Trevor] Nunn gives the play [All's Well That Ends Well] more than a touch of [Anton] Chekhov; he gives it the great Slav physician's context: arrivals and departures and a country estate and house in which Helena is gentlewoman to the Countess Rossilion (Peggy Ashcroft) who has an old gnarled retainer, Lavache, the Clown (Geoffrey Hutchings), with whom she chinwags and at whom she affectionately rails.
1982, The Month, London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., page 317
By the light of the big candles on stakes clusters of people were eating and drinking and chinwagging about the topics of the past four days.
1996, Ian Watson, Hard Questions, London: Gollancz