Phatic is Phat

Pic courtesy myfont.com

I'm no hip-hop guru but I was struck the other day by the strange similarity between the old school slang P H A T (a portmanteau 'cool' word) and Phatic the kind of conversation which is apparently content-free (or at least "lite") but is all about the relationship between two folk.

The great Polish anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski coined the phatic word to describe this kind of interaction. God forbid, someone in your team responds to your polite enquiry and actually tells you how they are today. Or that someone challenges your assertion that it's a lovely day today. That would be neither PHAT nor Phatic...