One Who Spreads Words for Gossip?

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, my name is Jessica. I’m calling from Denton, Texas.

Hello, Jessica. Welcome to the show. Hi, Jessica. I work at a hospital and the nurse’s station is where all the hot gossip happens. So I came down to the rehab office where I work and I said, wow, the tea is really hot up there. And my coworker, who’s a little bit older, didn’t understand the reference. So I told her that’s, you know, what the kids call gossip these days. And it got me thinking, you know, what are other phrases or references to gossip that have been used, you know, over the decades? I kind of talked to my family about it. And my mom came up with like, to dish. And my dad’s military. So he came up with like the scuttlebutt. And then, yeah, and then me growing up in the 90s, the one I could think of was like the 411, you know, what’s the lowdown.

But I was kind of thinking about maybe phrasings or terms like pre-1980s, like what were phrasings that might have been used to refer to hot gossip. The hot goss. What did we call the hot goss, Martha, back then, back in the dinosaur age?

Well, starting in the late 1800s, people talked about the scoop. That came from newspaper lingo. You know, what kind of scoop did you scoop up? You know, the well of gossip out there. And you mentioned scuttlebutt, which is a really interesting term because it goes back to the idea of a cask of drinking water on a ship. And the sailors would go and hang around the scuttlebutt to drink water, but they were also dishing gossip, sharing gossip the same way that people do that around the water cooler today.

That is so funny. I’ve never in my life understood but scuttlebutt. That’s funny. But then you have ones that aren’t so wholesome like the dirt and the poop and the dope, which all can all name gossip. What was the last one? Dope like the straight dope yeah but dope has not always meant drugs. Sometimes it just means chemicals and actually dope also meant the syrup that was applied to the carbonated water that made a soda. Oh wow I didn’t yeah dope a lot of times just meant the important ingredient in any mixture.

Oh yeah and in prison slang you might have grapes because where do you get your gossip? you You heard it on the grapevine. And what’s on a grapevine? Grapes. So grapes. Grapes are your prison slang. And particularly juicy gossip or tragic gossip is gore. G-O-R-E, gore. Ooh, I like that one.

And then there’s something they say in the West Indies. There’s a variety of different ways of phrasing it. It’s susu or sese or shese, which imitates the sound of whispering. So in West Indies, a little susu. I got a little susu for you. It’s a little gossip. I like all these new phrasings. I think some of these could come back around.

And you’ve probably heard the skinny, Jessica, right? Give me the skinny. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the skinny. But that’s more about like, just give me the straight facts. I want the truth. Oh, I didn’t realize that was kind of the meaning of that.

And Jessica, there’s a whole long list of words that we could go through for people who share gossip. Oh, my goodness. I mean, we all do it. But let me just share one of my favorites that actually goes all the way back to ancient Greek. In English, it’s spermologer, S-P-E-R-M-O-L-O-G-E-R, spermologer. And it goes back to an ancient Greek word that means a gatherer of seeds, you know, like a bird is going around and just picking up seeds here and there. And the Greek word spermologos gave us this word spermologer, which is somebody who goes around picking up gossip and spreading it around. It’s a very official title.

It sounds very official, right? A lot of these terms are heavily gendered towards women, but men are just as bad at gossips. As a matter of fact, they talk about prostitution being the oldest profession, but I think the oldest hobby is gossip.

Well, that’s what’s so funny about this current lingo of the tea is I feel like maybe historically it wasn’t as appropriate to admit that you were gossiping or that you had to use like a more under the less obvious term. But now it’s just like, no, this is the tea and I’m giving it to you straight, you know. So it’s interesting how the stigma around gossiping and how honest we are about it has changed a little.

Well, maybe we’ll be more honest with ourselves about everything because we need a little more honesty in the world, don’t we? Yeah, that’s true.

Well, Jessica, there are a ton of these terms and we’ve just given you a smattering of them. Maybe there’s something in there that you can use or maybe you all can coin something else just appropriate for the medical professions, you know? Give me the chart. What are the latest charts? I don’t know. I don’t know what it would be. Give me the vitals. What are the vitals?

Yeah, give me the vitals. Perfect. There we go. What’s the AB positive on the situation today? Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you guys so much. This was really fun.

All right. Take care now. Be well. Thank you, guys. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye, Jessica.

What do they call gossip in your field? What are people who gossip known as? Maybe there’s something fun that you want to share. Send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.