phatic speech

1. 1.

   conversational speech used to communicate sociability more than information

   Synonymsphatic communication

   Broaderconversation

Questions about phatic speech

What does phatic speech mean?

phatic speech means "conversational speech used to communicate sociability more than information".

What is another word for phatic speech?

Close synonyms include phatic communication. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is phatic speech a common word?

phatic speech is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.