Gossip

How to spell gossip

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gossip

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gossip mean?

1. nounCasual or idle talk and rumour about the personal affairs of other people.
2. verbTo talk casually or repeat rumours about the private affairs of others.

Gossip in a sentence

• noun

  The office was full of gossip about the sudden resignation.

• verb

  The neighbours like to gossip over the garden fence each morning.

• noun

  She dismissed the story as nothing more than idle gossip.

• verb

  Managers should not gossip about staff salaries in the break room.

Where does gossip come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Gossip comes from the Old English compound godsibb, which literally meant a godparent, that is a person related to you through God by standing as sponsor at a baptism. The two parts are 'god' and 'sibb', the latter meaning kinship or a close relative; the same 'sibb' survives in the modern word 'sibling'. Over the medieval period the term broadened from a baptismal sponsor to mean any close friend or familiar acquaintance, especially the women friends who attended a birth. From there it slid towards the idle, intimate talk such friends shared, and by the 1800s gossip chiefly meant rumour and casual chatter about other people's affairs. The buried word 'God' explains the single 's' in the middle that writers sometimes wrongly double.

How the word is built

• god- (from God)
• -sib (from Old English sibb: kinship, relative)