flat chat

• flat-chat

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

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• Audio (AUS)

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flat chat (not comparable)

1. (Australia, idiomatic) At maximum capability, intensity, or speed.

   We had the car going flat chat down the highway when the cops pulled us over.

   • 1987, Tim Winton, That Eye, The Sky, page 110:

     If there was a radio we'd have it going flat-chat, boy.

   • 1998, John Marsden, The Night is for Hunting, unnumbered page:

     I spun around yet again and took off flat chat.

   • 2012, Chris Hammer, The River: A Journey Through the Murray-Darling Basin‎, page 166:

     I′m driving flat chat as I cross Green Gully, a nondescript depression in the wide flat plain of western New South Wales.

flat chat (not comparable)

1. (Australia, idiomatic) Extremely busy.

   Can you call me back tomorrow, mate? I′m flat chat at the moment.

   • 1997, Alexis Wright, Plains of Promise‎, page 228:

     “Look,” he went on, “I don′t even remember writing anything in the bloody diary, for Christ′s sake. I was flat chat at the time.”

   • 2007, Joanna Hunt, Jacqui′s Dilemma‎, page 64:

     “Sorry, I′m flat chat with work. I don′t see how you can get away until Saturday.”

   • 2009, Sean Dooley, Cooking With Baz, Large Print 16pt Edition, page 167,

     Except that I was too flat chat to get up and collect it myself so I motioned to Wok as surreptitiously as I could, nodding in the direction of the note lying invitingly on the asphalt. Wok stared back at me uncomprehendingly.

"Flat strap" is commonly misused in place of "flat chat", however the origin of the word - shortened from "flat out chatting" - points to "flat chat" being the correct implementation.

• flat out
• flat strap