How Patriarchy Redefined “Gossip” to Be a Women’s Thing
The origin and painful history of gossip; how it was used against women over the years
In the modern world, the noun, gossip /ˈɡɒsɪp/, is usually referred to a person who likes talking about other people’s private lives.
However, the term “gossip” dates back to the 12th Century, where the late Old English derived the word “godsibb” ‘god’mother, ‘god’father + a sibling or kin. However, the meaning of gossip gradually changed because of the way society viewed it throughout the years. The Church used the word for good as well, it was recorded that an English bishop named Wulfstan used the word in his sermons.
In time, Middle English began to refer to gossip as someone close to you, like a close friend or a close sibling and someone you could tell anything, and it was applied to both sexes; the beast fable “The Fox and the Wolf” confirmed this.
From the 17th Century to the early 19th Century, the meaning referred to someone who engaged in “idle talk” and sharing of secrets. The word went from having a divine origin to having an insulting history in a matter of years. Still, this isn’t all that happened.
