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.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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