Small Talk Meaning

(idiomatic) Idle conversation, typically on innocuous or unimportant subjects, usually engaged in at social gatherings out of politeness.

Example: 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ch. 7:
  [T]o the credit of the lady it may be added that . . . without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her.
1910, P. G. Wodehouse, "Misunderstood":
  If he had a fault as a conversationalist, it was a certain tendency to monotony, a certain lack of sparkle and variety in his small-talk.
2009, John Cloud, "Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009," Time, 26 June:
  Yet for so public a figure, Jackson was socially awkward, inept at small talk and terrified when the distant audience became an adoring mob.