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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
conversational
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
conversational (=informal and friendly)
▪ I tried to keep my tone pleasant and conversational.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
data
▪ My chairman knows more than anyone how difficult it is to obtain good quality samples of natural conversational data.
discourse
▪ There are two points worth noting about this fragment of conversational discourse.
▪ There are informal ways of expressing the topic, even in conversational discourse.
▪ So, it is a myth that conversational discourse is inevitably symmetrical.
▪ How does the discourse analyst decide which discourse subjects to include in the presupposition pool for a particular piece of conversational discourse?
▪ Our argument for the importance of considering individual speaker's topics in conversational discourse would consequently be weaker.
▪ We shall examine an extract from conversational discourse containing a longish paratone which illustrates the features just described.
▪ There is an assumption that conversational discourse is symmetrical and logical.
speech
▪ In conversational speech the two-way element is crucial.
▪ That use of the passive in written language which allows non-attribution of agency is typically absent from conversational speech.
▪ It is a way of thinking and expressing oneself in language that is radically different from conversational speech.
▪ For beginners it is best to start on slow, careful speech, such as that of newsreaders, before attempting conversational speech.
style
▪ Its tragic revelations are presented in a quiet, conversational style which hides deep emotions.
▪ He describes in conversational style the ups and downs of his long career.
▪ Another inspector I know had problems with an innocuous piece written in a mildly conversational style.
▪ As we shall see in Chapter 4, its ideas are echoed in many studies of women's preferred conversational style.
▪ Gone were the carefree, witty passages written in the first person, the conversational style, the caustic bitter comments.
tone
▪ He can move deftly from an almost conversational tone to a whisper.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a class in conversational Spanish.
▪ McGovern lectures in a conversational style.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But what is the source of these maxims of conversational behaviour?
▪ Discontent in women interested him; it gave him a conversational opening, a place to plant his seeds of compassion.
▪ Having noted this, the figures for Anderson's turn-length are worth examining as evidence of change in his conversational behaviour.
▪ It is this kind of inference that Grice dubs an implicature, or more properly a conversational implicature.
▪ Its tragic revelations are presented in a quiet, conversational style which hides deep emotions.
▪ She could do nothing but batten down the conversational hatches and wait until the storm blew itself out.
▪ Some software is therefore designed to run in conversational mode.
▪ There are few conversational gambits in discussions or meetings.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Conversational

Conversational \Con`ver*sa"tion*al\ (k[o^]n`v[~e]r*s[=a]"sh[u^]n*al), a. Pertaining to conversation; in the manner of one conversing; as, a conversational style.
--Thackeray.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
conversational

1779, from conversation + -al (1).

Wiktionary
conversational

a. 1 of, relating to, or in the style of a conversation; informal and chatty 2 (context computing English) involving a two-way exchange of messages, such as between a client and a server

WordNet
conversational

adj. characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation; "wrote her letters in a colloquial style"; "the broken syntax and casual enunciation of conversational English" [syn: colloquial]

Usage examples of "conversational".

She listened with only half an ear to the byplay between Kit and John Travis as she gazed out the window, intent on the mountain scenery, her deep leather cabin chair swiveled in a conversational mode toward the sofa.

John, the doyerme of Khami Mission, had dutifully thanked the Almighty for His bounty but was going on, in conversational tones, to point out to Him that a little rain soon would help pollination of the immature cobs in the field and ensure a continuation of that bounty.

His most delectable pleasure was cutting a fanatical eugenicist into conversational ribbons.

By now Fiona should have learned that the sort of joshing that is a normal part of the conversational exchanges in British or American offices did not go down well in Germany.

The everyday conversational of Art is now the tenebrous chatty-talk of academics and goony writers like me.

I was not apologetic about my holidays, or indeed my way of life, which I had chosen, but I was aware that it or they did not make for entertaining conversational exchange.

Septach Melayn gave Count Irani a good-humored wink and turned away to find some other conversational partner among a group of younger princes that had collected about the table of wines.

Twice Palli tried to toss the conversational ball to him, to take a turn at the entertaining, and twice he fielded it back to Palli or to dy Ferrej.

Lee meant the phrase as nothing but a polite conversational placeholder, but Rhoodie nodded all the same.

As if dazzled by too many sensa, he moved through a wall of little sounds and odours: sizzling meats and conversational tidbits, woodsmoke and scorched oil and icevine burning thick and sweet.

It is a kind of pleasant, almost conversational kind of copulation that gradually moves through a series of almost unquantifiable upticks in pace, each marking a stage in her approach to the climax, until at last he will detect certain unmistakable terminal signals from her, soft staccato moaning sounds, a sudden burst of sweat-slickness along her shoulders, and he will whip himself onward then to the final frenzied strokes, taking his cues from her at every point and letting go in the ultimate moment, finally, of his own carefully governed self-control.

At other times they argued heatedly, mostly when Aloysius rose-as he knew he was expected to-to conversational hooks which Warren Trent baited.

I suspect that I would prefer our quiet, sit-in-the-shade, conversational creekside approach to catching fish.

Her eyes looked into his, and hair erected on the back of his neck when he saw the emptiness of her formerly lively pupils, a dreadful, soulless emptiness that made her no longer interested in masculine small-talk, feminine fripperies or any of her oldtime conversational subjects.

Amblecope, the man with the restless, prominent eyes and the mouth ready mobilised for conversational openings, had planted himself in a neighbouring arm-chair.