phatic.
Pertaining to words used to convey any kind of social relationship and whose meaning is otherwise either deemphasized or absent.
Meaning & usage
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.
Some dialects of a language may use a certain term or phrase in a phatic way, even if other dialects don't.
Where this word comes from
From Ancient Greek φατός (phatós, “spoken”) - from φημί (phēmí, “I say”) - + -ic. Probably formally influenced by emphatic, which predates this term.
A phatic utterance.
Where this word comes from
From Ancient Greek φατός (phatós, “spoken”) - from φημί (phēmí, “I say”) - + -ic. Probably formally influenced by emphatic, which predates this term.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.