/ˈkɒnvɜːs/ (noun/adjective), /kənˈvɜːs/ (verb)
[verb] To talk with someone in a relaxed and friendly way, sharing thoughts and ideas back and forth. It suggests a natural, two-way exchange rather than a formal speech or one-sided lecture.
The word 'converse' originally meant to live with or keep company with someone — talking came later.
The story of 'converse' begins in Latin, with the verb 'conversari', a compound built from the prefix 'con-' (meaning 'together' or 'with') and 'versare' (meaning 'to turn' or 'to keep turning'). 'Versare' itself was the frequentative form of 'vertere', meaning 'to turn', implying repeated or habitual turning. So at its deepest root, 'conversari' meant something like 'to turn oneself about together with others' — a beautiful, almost physical image of people moving through life side by side.
In classical and medieval Latin, 'conversari' carried a meaning far removed from chatting. It meant to live with, to dwell among, to keep company with someone. When early Christian writers used the word, they spoke of 'conversing with God' meaning living in His presence, inhabiting His world. The Latin word 'conversatio', derived from the same root, meant 'way of life' or 'manner of living', and it is in this sense that the word passed into Old French as 'conversation' — still focused on companionship and dwelling together, not on spoken exchange.
The word arrived in Middle English during the 14th century, again carrying the sense of 'living among' or 'keeping company with'. This is why, in older English texts, you might read of someone 'conversing with villains' and mean that they spent time with them, not that they had a chat. The gradual narrowing of meaning toward spoken dialogue happened slowly across the 15th and 16th centuries, as the social act of being together became inseparable from the act of talking — since conversation, in practice, meant people gathered and speaking.
By the late 16th century, 'converse' had settled firmly into its modern meaning of spoken exchange, and writers like Shakespeare used it freely to mean verbal communication between people. The older sense of 'dwelling together' faded quietly from everyday use, though it left a ghost in theological and philosophical writing for some time afterward. This shift reflects a broader truth about language: words that describe social behaviour tend to narrow over time, as one feature of an activity — in this case, talking — comes to represent the whole.
Interestingly, 'converse' also developed a second life as an adjective and noun, meaning 'the opposite' or 'the reverse', as in 'the converse is also true'. This meaning comes from the same Latin root 'vertere' (to turn) via the past participle 'conversus' (turned around), giving us the idea of something flipped or reversed. The full chain runs: Latin 'vertere' → Latin 'conversus' → Medieval Latin 'conversum' → English 'converse'. This is the same root that gives us 'reverse' (Latin 'reversus', turned back), 'diverse' (Latin 'diversus', turned apart), and 'universe' (Latin 'universus', turned into one). All of these words carry within them that ancient image of turning.