EGAVE

phatic

About 0.06 uses per million words.

Meaning

  1. adjective Pertaining to words used to convey any kind of social relationship and whose meaning is otherwise either deemphasized or absent.
    You needn't be angry about the insincerity of shopkeepers' how-are-you greetings. Well-adjusted people understand that the question is phatic in the context and that that's usually no problem.
  2. noun A phatic utterance.

Similar words

plerematic homiletical lingual phonetic empractical tonguely amicitial paralinguistic phonal intersocial

Often followed by

communion function communication and act talk utterances language functions

Word family

phatically

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