chat (redirected from chew the fat)

chat, name applied to several Old World perching birds, such as the wheatear (see thrush), the whinchat, and the stonechat, and to a common American warbler.

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chat

Real-time conversation among computer users in a networked environment such as the Internet. After a user types a text message and presses the Enter key, the text immediately appears on the other users' computers, permitting typed conversations that are often only somewhat slower than normal conversation. A chat can be private (between two users) or public (where other users can see the messages and participate if they wish). Public chatting is conducted in “chat rooms,” Web sites devoted to chat, usually about a specific topic. The thousands of chat rooms now available typically use the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) protocol, developed in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen of Finland. See also bulletin-board system.

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chat

Yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens)

(credit: Ron Austing—Bruce Coleman Inc.)

Any of several species of songbird named for their harsh, chattering notes. True chats (chat-thrushes) make up a major division of the thrush family (Turdidae). Australian chats (usually placed in the family Maluridae), which inhabit scrubby open lands, are about 5 in. (13 cm) long. The yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens, family Parulidae) of North America is the largest wood warbler (7.5 in., or 19 cm, long). Greenish gray above and bright yellow below, with white “spectacles,” it hides in thickets but may perch in the open to utter its mewing, churring, and whistling sounds. See also redstart.

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A real time conferencing capability between two or more users on a local network (LAN), on the Internet or via a BBS. The chat is really a "text chat," because the conversing is accomplished by typing on the keyboard, not speaking. Each keystroke is transmitted as it is pressed. The chat rooms of the 1980s were the forerunner of the "instant messaging" craze of the 1990s. See chat room, instant messaging, IRC and voice chat.

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(chat, messaging)

chat - Any system that allows any number of logged-in users to have a typed, real-time, on-line conversation via a network. The medium of chat is descended from talk, but the terms (and the media) have been distinct since at least the early 1990s. talk is prototypically for a small number of people, generally with no provision for channels. In chat systems, however, there are many channels in which any number of people can talk; and users may send private (one-to-one) messages. Some early chat systems (in use 1998) include IRC, ICQ and Palace. More recent alternatives include MSN Messenger and Google Talk. Chat systems have given rise to a distinctive style combining the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen to help with this. The conventions of chat systems include special items of jargon, generally abbreviations meant to save typing, which are not used orally. E.g. BCNU, BBL, BTW, CUL, FWIW, FYA, FYI, IMHO, OT, OTT, TNX, WRT, WTF, WTH, , , BBL, HHOK, NHOH, ROTFL, AFK, b4, TTFN, TTYL, OIC, re. Much of the chat style is identical to (and probably derived from) Morse code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s, and there is, not surprisingly, some overlap with TDD jargon. Most of the jargon was in use in talk systems. Many of these expressions are also common in Usenet news and electronic mail and some have seeped into popular culture, as with emoticons. The MUD community uses a mixture of emoticons, a few of the more natural of the old-style talk mode abbreviations, and some of the "social" list above. In general, though, MUDders express a preference for typing things out in full rather than using abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD cultures, which tend to include many touch typists. Abbreviations specific to MUDs include: FOAD, ppl (people), THX (thanks), UOK? (are you OK?). Some BIFFisms (notably the variant spelling "d00d") and aspects of ASCIIbonics appear to be passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders and are already pandemic on chat systems in general. See also hakspek. Suck article "Screaming in a Vacuum".