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 juicy or tragic gossip is gore. In the West Indies, shu-shu, su su, and sey-sey all mean “gossip,” and imitate the sound of whispering. The skinny may also mean “gossip,” although it’s more often used to mean simply “information.” The Ancient Greek word for “gossiper,” spermologos, literally means “a gatherer of seeds,” suggesting someone who picks up scraps of knowledge, much as a bird goes around picking up seeds and other small items. The Greek word’s English derivative, spermologer, now rarely used, means “a gossip” or “collector of trivia.” This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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