How to Use happy talk in a Sentence

happy talk

noun
  • But they won't be saved by out-of-touch happy talk or shifting blame in ways that don't ring true with voters.
    — Joel Mathis, The Week, 5 Apr. 2022
  • Democrats are meeting that with more happy talk of unity and normalcy.
    — Charles M. Blow New York Times, Star Tribune, 9 Nov. 2020
  • That could force change — or at least some serious talks instead of happy talk and gaslighting.
    — Charlie Eccleshare, The Athletic, 27 Dec. 2024
  • Or what may be worse, happy talk, which in time erodes credibility.
    — Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 18 July 2018
  • But the mystery isn’t why the 2008 happy talk was so utterly wrong.
    — U T Editorial Board, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Aug. 2025
  • After a lot of happy talk over the past half year, the real Biden presidency has emerged.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 10 Sep. 2021
  • Second, Halliburton largely dispensed with the happy talk on its call.
    — Liam Denning | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 21 Oct. 2019
  • That the will appears to exist justifies Tuesday’s happy talk.
    — Jim Newell, Slate Magazine, 6 June 2017
  • But the way this season is playing out looks a lot like one of those Texas teams where all the happy talk made the underachievement look that much worse.
    — Dan Wolken, USA TODAY, 26 Sep. 2021
  • The roots of the consensus may have been the military believing its own happy talk about the resolve of the Afghan army.
    — Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 23 Aug. 2021
  • Despite the happy talk, Biden leaves office on a profoundly bittersweet note.
    — Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News, 15 Jan. 2025
  • Don’t believe the happy talk that this was a healthy display of deliberative democracy.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 7 Jan. 2023
  • All the monsters can go away now or just go hiding under the bed where they’ll conveniently be forgotten amid the coming happy talk for the next eight months.
    — Dave Hyde, Sun Sentinel, 5 Jan. 2026
  • But Albrecht said the strategy goes beyond corporate happy talk.
    — Ryan Faughnder, Los Angeles Times, 10 Aug. 2021
  • The right was now a font of happy talk about the dawn of a new age of liberty based on free-market economics and American firepower.
    — Jacob Heilbrunn, The New Republic, 23 Jan. 2020
  • But let's not get distracted by all the post-mortem happy talk from the same leaders who repeated assured us that their secret bid was strong and competitive.
    — Mark Naymik, cleveland.com, 18 Jan. 2018
  • For Democrats, the happy talk will mostly be about this year being the harbinger of an extremely successful midterm election.
    — Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, 22 Dec. 2017
  • Reading between the lines, Biden brought a much tougher message to Europe than what the happy talk about sacred obligations suggests.
    — Noah Millman, The Week, 14 June 2021
  • There is a lot of happy talk about working together to expand the pie, but the word competition keeps bumping up against the word collaboration.
    — Neil Senturia, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Oct. 2025
  • But the generals’ chorus of happy talk defied a year-long stream of intelligence assessments that the insurgency had gained strength.
    — Washington Post, 9 Aug. 2021
  • The situation is critical in many places across the United States and all the happy talk and wishful thinking in the world is not going to wash that away.
    — CBS News, 28 June 2020
  • And beneath all the happy talk, behind the scenes, there are troubling signs that the system California regulators have proposed will not be up to the task.
    — David Roberts, Vox, 12 Dec. 2018
  • This happy talk of it being completed—just look at the language, the celebration, NASA's planning, and so forth for the launch.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 25 Aug. 2022
  • In that now-infamous press conference, Biden unloosed a farrago of wishful thinking, happy talk, half-truths, and blatant deceptions.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 20 Aug. 2021
  • The White House needs to reassure Americans not with happy talk but with daily medical briefings that are candid and complete.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 4 Oct. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'happy talk.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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