English

Two men in conversation in Dresden, Germany, circa 1946, photographed by Richard Peter

Alternative forms

• chin wag
• chin-wag

Noun

chinwag ‎(plural chinwags)

1. (Britain, informal) An informal conversation, usually about everyday matters; a chat, a gossip.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, OCLC 483591931, OL 2004261W:

     Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub.

   • 2005, Laura Penny, Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 978-0-7710-7042-6, page 222:

     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, […]

   • 2008 September 29, “Raising a cup for Macmillan Cancer”, in Reading Evening Post, Reading, Berkshire: Surrey & Berkshire Media, OCLC 500341373, archived from the original on 3 October 2008:

     Hundreds of Reading folk got together for coffee, cake and a good old fashioned chinwag during a national cancer charity's coffee morning fundraiser.

   • 2014, [C.] Alan Bradley, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel, New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, ISBN 978-0-385-34405-0:

     "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."

Verb

chinwag ‎(third-person singular simple present chinwags, present participle chinwagging, simple past and past participle chinwagged)

1. (Britain, informal) To chat, to gossip.

   I saw the pair of them chinwagging by the water-cooler.‎

   • 1972 March, Keith Draper, “Big Trout are Suckers after Dark”, in Field & Stream, Los Angeles, Calif.: CBS Magazines, OCLC 49633059, page 161:

     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.

   • 1982, The Month, London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., ISSN 0027-0172, OCLC 851320618, page 317:

     [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.

   • 1996, Ian Watson, Hard Questions, London: Gollancz, ISBN 978-0-575-06189-7:

     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.

Anagrams

• chawing