Noun

(en noun)

(linguistics) A variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation.

* A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

*

And in addition, many dialects of English make no morphological distinction between Adjectives and Adverbs, and thus use Adjectives in contexts where the standard language requires -ly'' Adverbs: compare
(81) (a)      Tex talks ''really quickly'' [Adverb + Adverb]
        (b)   %Tex talks ''real quick [Adjective + Adjective]

A dialect of a language perceived as substandard and wrong.

* 1967 , Roger W. Shuy, Discovering American dialects , National Council of Teachers of English, page 1:

Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here. [...]

* 1975 , Linguistic perspectives on black English , H. Carl, page 219:

Well, those children don't speak dialect , not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here.

* 1994 , H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the dark , Heinemann, page 11:

[...] on the second day, Miss Anderson gave the school a lecture on why it was wrong to speak dialect'. She had ended by saying "Respectable people don't speak ' dialect ."

A language.

A variant of a non-standardized programming language.

Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC.

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.