Gossip goes by many names: the poop, the scoop, the lowdown, the dope, the scuttlebutt, the 411, the grapes, the gore, and hot tea. Plus, John Donne’s love poems are among the greatest in the English language, even as they’re famously...
We dish about the many terms for “gossip,” including hot tea, scuttlebutt, the scoop, the 411, the lowdown, the dirt, the scoop, hot goss, the poop, the dope, the T. In prison slang, grapes means “gossip,” and particularly...
Bobbie in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, wonders about the expression What’s the lowdown?, meaning “What’s happening?” Lowdown, meaning “the skinny,” “the scoop,” or “the details” originated in...
Did you ever wonder why we capitalize the pronoun “I,” but not any other pronoun? Also, the romantic story behind the term halcyon days, the origin of the phrase “like white on rice,” and the linguistic scuttlebutt on the...
Amanda in La Mesa, California, wonders why her roommate didn’t recognize scuttlebutt, meaning gossip. The word comes from nautical use, where a scuttlebutt was a cask of drinking water, a butt, with a hole cut in it, from scuttle, to cut a hole...