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.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
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