Home British & World English trash talk

Definition of trash talk in English:

trash talk

noun

US
informal

  • [mass noun] Insulting or boastful speech intended to demoralize or humiliate a sporting opponent.

    ‘he heard more trash talk from the Giants before the game than during the game’
    • ‘What began as light trash talk became bawdy comedy as the show progressed.’
    • ‘‘That would be a form of trash talk,’ he once explained.’
    • ‘This entire front I put up, laughing, joking, trash-talking, it's all fake.’
    • ‘But if your anglers get skunked, you risk shame and humiliation on the weigh-in stage… not to mention a litany of trash talk from other fantasy players.’
    • ‘But if someone said something big enough to satisfy my thirst for trash talk of any kind, I'd have heard about it.’
    • ‘I think it sells a lot better for TV, but I used to look at the old fighters like Joe Louis and I hardly ever heard trash talk at their press conferences.’
    • ‘Customize your interview trash-talking for the person giving the interview.’
    • ‘Meet two CEOs who take trash-talking to a whole ‘nother level.’
    • ‘None of it is true, which is the essence of all trash talk.’
    • ‘We're talking bluster and light-hearted trash talk as we each announce our picks.’
    • ‘This is supposed to be good natured playoff trash talk.’
    • ‘Watch the game, and you'll hear plenty of trash talk from the players who have been miked for the game.’
    • ‘But they go there and hit them with the same trash talk that worked so well last year.’
    • ‘Despite the derision that its scripted matches, over-the-top trash talk, and outlandish characters sometimes inspire, professional wrestling is big business.’
    • ‘But they have to start this kind of trash talk early on to get people noticing things.’
    • ‘They lash out with trash talk and threats and constant references to their own resolve because they are afraid.’
    • ‘Would it be wise to encourage our students to exchange fact-based narrative for edgy commentary and digital trash talk?’
    • ‘Frankly, Shawn Perine and I, seated across the table from Jones, had already forgotten the barb, for it seemed nearly innocuous when weighed against typical bodybuilding trash talk.’
    • ‘McGrady's point about truth in trash talk seems valid - among the floggings, few stopped to ask whether what McGrady said was true.’
    • ‘And does he worry that his trash talk about the unreliability of U.S. Treasury Bonds might start to make our creditors around the world, like, for instance, China, just a tad nervous?’

verb

[NO OBJECT]US
informal

  • Make boastful or insulting remarks in order to demoralize or humiliate a sporting opponent.

    ‘Westering's players do not swear or tussle or trash-talk’
    [with object] ‘people were going to trash-talk us until we started to win’
    ‘trash-talking foreign junk-bond dealers’
    • ‘Does he mean that Federation Square is hostile, like rappers trash-talk their enemies?’
    • ‘But the thing I'm really proudest of is watching people totally get into the game in multiplayer, trash-talking and coming up with all kinds of wild tactics to destroy each other.’
    • ‘Whether it was Magic Johnson trash-talking with Larry Bird or Knicks fans giving Reggie Miller the bird, the NBA has seen some super rivalries.’
    • ‘Then, his head bouncing up and down, he trash-talked face-to-face with Dawkins before chucking the ball deep into the stands.’
    • ‘Nor can I think of another team so quick to trash-talk the beanballer or beanbalee.’
    • ‘Grove concludes, however, rather anticlimactically, ‘yesterday, Peterson and Holbrooke assured me that they're just old friends who love to trash-talk each other.’’
    • ‘‘We've been trash-talking about the gold medal all season,’ Hasek says.’
    • ‘Keep trash-talking, and we still hope he might snap like he used to.’
    • ‘After realizing that we've managed to burn only 14 minutes of the lunch hour, we succumb to that intoxicatingly familiar urge to trash talk our superiors.’
    • ‘(By the way, there's nothing more humiliating to a 34-year-old video game reviewer than getting blasted away and trash-talked down to by a punk 12-year-old on Xbox Live).’
    • ‘Austin was the first wrestler to adopt the WWF's ‘attitude’, he became the beer-swelling, trash-talking, foul-mouthed SOB that he is, or was should I say.’
    • ‘In this day of the loud, trash-talking, me-first NBA star, Millers is refreshingly quiet and humble.’
    • ‘Franken wrote that book, I think, as a response to the conservative vice of delightedly and loudly trash-talking against their enemies.’
    • ‘He's not going to put it in your face or trash-talk or do anything like that, because that just wouldn't be his style.’
    • ‘To insure that various allies didn't steal away core funders, he would keep his distance and be inclined to trash talk behind their backs.’
    • ‘Even further, stations themselves often trash-talk about the other stations in a broadcast market.’
    • ‘They were both up and down for most of the night and although Dorey continues to feel mildly compelled to trash talk, he slept stretched out beside me and was obviously not genuinely upset.’
    • ‘We can trash-talk all we want in-game, but there's very little that's gained by taking that outside of the competitive arena.’
    • ‘I'll lay it out my views, trash talk the other side a bit, you know, goad them to answer back, then tell them to shut up when they do.’
    offend, cause offence to, give offence to, affront, abuse, be rude to, call someone names, slight, disparage, discredit, libel, slander, malign, defame, denigrate, cast aspersions on, impugn, slur, revile, calumniate
    View synonyms

Pronunciation:

trash talk

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