11 November 2020
Gossip, as we all know, is rumor and unsubstantiated news of a titillating or sensational nature. But surprisingly, its origin is in the Christian rite of baptism.
The word dates back to the Old English word godsibb, meaning a godparent or sponsor at a baptism. It’s a compound of god (n., deity) + sibb (adj., marking a kinship, relationship). The sibb is the same root as in sibling.
The word appears in Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Sermon of the Wolf to the English). Wulfstan, who often styled himself as “the Wolf” in his writing, was the archbishop of York. He wrote the sermon c.1015 C.E., and it is an apocalyptic sermon blaming the predations of the Vikings on the sins of the English people. In the version of the sermon found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 419, Wulfstan writes:
And godsibbas & godbearn to fela man forspilde wide geond þas ðeode.
(And too many gossips & godchildren have been destroyed widely throughout this nation.)
The word eventually expanded in meaning to refer to a close friend of either sex, the type of person one might choose to be a godparent to one’s children. This sense appears in the beast fable The Fox and the Wolf found in Oxford, Bodleian MS Digby 86, which was copied c.1275. In this passage, the fox is acting the role of confessor to the wolf:
“Gossip,” quod þe wolf, “forȝef hit me,
Ich habbe ofte sehid qued bi þe.
Men seide þat þou on þine live
Misferdest mid mine wive:
Ich þe aperseivede one stounde,
And in bedde togedere ou founde.
Ich wes ofte ou ful ney,
And in bedde togedere ou sey.
Ich wende, also oþre doþ,
Þat Ihc iseie were soþ,
And þerfore þou were me loþ.
Gode gossip, ne be þou nohut wroþ.”(“Gossip,” said the wolf, “forgive me,”
I have often said evil things about you.
Men said that that you on your life
You sinned with my wife:
I then perceived one occasion,
And found you together in bed.
I was often very near you,
And saw you together in bed,
I believed, as other do,
That what I saw was true,
And therefore you were loathsome to me.
Good gossip, don’t be angry.)
And eventually the sense shifted to refer to a person who engages in idle talk, that is a friend with whom one shares confidences. This sense appears in Thomas Drant’s translation of Horace’s satires. He opens the fable of country mouse and city mouse thusly:
Full gosseplike, the father sage,
beginnes his fable then
Drant uses the word to refer to a man, but the word would more often be applied to women, as witnessed by John Lyly’s 1580 edition of his Euphues:
Faire Lady, if it be the guise of Italy to welcome straungers with straungnesse, I must needes say the custome is straunge and the country barbarous, if the manner of Ladyes to salute Gentlemen with coynesse, then I am enforced to think the women voyde of curtesie to use such welcome, and the men past shame that will come. But heereafter I will eyther bringe a stoole on mine arme for an unbidden guest, or a visarde on my face for a shamelesse gossippe.
The verb to gossip, meaning to engage in rumormongering dates to at least 1631, when Michael Drayton uses it in his poem “The Moone-Calfe”:
Amongst the rest, at the Worlds labour there,
For good old Women, most especiall were,
Which had bene iolly Wenches in their dayes,
Through all the Parish, and had borne the prayse,
For merry Tales: one Mother Red-Cap hight,
And Mother Howlet somewhat ill of sight,
For she had hurt her eyes with watching late;
Them Mother Bumby a mad iocund Mate
As euer Gossipt, and with her there came
Olde Gammer Gurton, a right plesant Dame,
As the best of them; being thus together,
The bus'nesse done for which they had come thither.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the verb was turned back into a noun, this time referring to the talk and rumor itself. On 14 December 1791, the Times of London runs what looks to be the opening scene of a play entitled The Gossip Shop about a place where people gather to hear news from abroad:
The Gossip Shop.
A Serio-Comic Operatical Farce,
As It Is Now Performing Opposite Burlington-House in Piccadilly
The description of the location indicates that the shop is supposed to be Fortnum and Mason, a department store which still exists at that spot. I don’t know whether this is the first scene in an actual play, or if it’s just a short, humorous piece the paper ran. Regardless, the word is being used as a noun to mean rumor and sensational news.
And on 31 October 1792, the newspaper the World runs this tidbit about operatic soprano Anna Storace:
Storace, Green-Room Gossip has it, is no longer the captive of her once favorite composer.
And on 8 May 1794, the Oracle and Public Advertiser writes about the port of Ostend in what is now Belgium:
The coffee houses are places for gossip and play—but few papers are to be found there; and, what may be thought rather extraordinary, not a Parisian Print is here to be seen or obtained.
The word has come a long way from godparent to salacious news.
Sources:
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. god-sibb.
“The Drama.” World (London), 31 October 1792, 2. Gale News Vault.
Drayton, Michael. “The Moone-Calfe.” The Battaile of Agincourt. London: Augustine Mathewes for William Lee, 1631, 237. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“The Gossip Shop.” Times (London), 14 December 1791, 2. Gale News Vault.
Horace. A Medicinable Morall. Thomas Drant, trans. London: Thomas Marshe, 1566, sig. Hviij. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Lyly, John. Euphues. London: Gabriel Cawood, 1580, 11r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. god-sib(be, n.
“Ostend.” Oracle and Public Advertiser (London), 8 May 1794, 3. Gale News Vault.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. gossip, n., gossip, v.
Treharne, Elaine. “The Fox and the Wolf.” Old and Middle English, c.890–c.1400: An Anthology, second edition. Maldon, MA: Blackwell, 2004,336.
Wulfstan. “Sermo Lupi ad Anglos.” In Dorothy Behurum, ed. The Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, 258.