Noun

(en noun)

Expression and exchange of individual ideas through talking with other people; also, a set instance or occasion of such talking.

* 1699 , , Heads designed for an essay on conversations

Study gives strength to the mind; conversation , grace: the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness: one gives substance and form to the statue, the other polishes it.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=When this conversation was repeated in detail within the hearing of the young woman in question, and undoubtedly for his benefit, Mr. Trevor threw shame to the winds and scandalized the Misses Brewster then and there by proclaiming his father to have been a country storekeeper.}}

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill.

(fencing) The back-and-forth play of the blades in a bout.

(obsolete) Interaction; commerce or intercourse with other people; dealing with others.

* 1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Acts XI:

Yt chaunsed thatt a whole yere they had their conversacion with the congregacion there, and taught moche people insomoche thatt the disciples off Antioche we the fyrst that wer called Christen.

(archaic) Behaviour, the way one conducts oneself; a person's way of life.

*, New York Review of Books, 2001, p.50:

There are many that take no heed what happeneth to others by bad conversation , and therefore overthrow themselves in the same manner through their own fault, not foreseeing dangers manifest.

(obsolete) Sexual intercourse.

* 1723 , Charles Walker, Memoirs of the Life of Sally Salisbury :

(Ariadne)quitted her Lover (Theseus), for the tumultuous Conversation of (Bacchus).

* 1749 , (Henry Fielding), , Folio Society 1973, p. 333:

The landlady therefore would by no means have admitted any conversation of a disreputable kind to pass under her roof.

(computing) The protocol-based interaction between systems processing a transaction.

Noun

(uncountable, archaic) Verbal exchange, conversation.

* 1847 , , (Jane Eyre), Chapter XVIII

Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals.

(uncountable) Expression in words, either speech or writing.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author= , title=Pixels or Perish , volume=100, issue=2, page=106 , magazine= citation , passage=Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse . Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.}}

(countable) A formal lengthy exposition of some subject, either spoken or written.

The preacher gave us a long discourse on duty.

(countable) Any rational expression, reason.

* South

difficult, strange, and harsh to the discourses of natural reason

* Shakespeare

Sure he that made us with such large discourse , / Looking before and after, gave us not / That capability and godlike reason / To rust in us unused.

(social sciences, countable) An institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic (after ).

* 2007 , Christine L. Marran, Poison Woman: Figuring Female Transgression in Modern Japanese Culture (page 137)

Furthermore, it should be recalled from the previous chapter that criminological discourse of the 1930s deemed every woman a potential criminal, implicitly including the domestic woman.

* 2008 , Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis Gordon, A Companion to African-American Studies (page 308)

But equally important to the emergence of uniquely African-American queer discourses is the refusal of African-American movements for liberation to address adequately issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

(obsolete) Dealing; transaction.

* Beaumont and Fletcher

Good Captain Bessus, tell us the discourse / Betwixt Tigranes and our king, and how / We got the victory.