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Lately I've run into the word dish used to mean gossip. Does anyone know where this originated?
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My guess would be that it is an abbreviation of 'dish the dirt'. The dirt was gossip and someone would dish it up. Where that came from though I don't know.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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dish has been used figuratively for a long time:
1606 Shakes. Tr. & Cr. v. i. 10 Thou full dish of Foole. 1608 I Per. iv. vi. 160 My dish of chastity. 1708 Motteux Rabelais v. vii. (1737) 24 Roger+had a Dish of Chat with her. 1753 Gray Lett. Wks. 1884 II. 241 To entertain you with a dish of very choice erudition. 1820 Lady Granville Lett. (1894) I. 183 This new dish of Continental troubles. 1836 Backwoods Canada 183 For the sake of a dish of gossip.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ah, well, so when did it get to mean an attractive lady Tsuwm?
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stranger
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stranger
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I don't know about "the latest dish," but I've always liked the word "quidnunc" for a person who gossips. It literally means "what now?" in Latin.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I must quote Dr. Sowder here, past professor of American Literature at Longwood.
When lecturing us 18-year-olds (centuries ago) on the evil of gossip, he smiled his huge-lipped smile and said,
The definition of a bitch is a woman who must tell the truth..
I always liked thinking about that definition and noticing, centuries since, how often that definition has proven to be true.
Best regards,
WildWords
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Oh, you're in trouble now!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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My Slang and Euphemism Dictionary says:
dish...4. to engage in gossip; to dish out gossip. (US homosexual use, mid 1900s-pres.)
Unfortunately, it doesn't speculate on how the term came to be used in connection with gossip.
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veteran
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veteran
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The word 'gossip' as a noun originally was 'godsib', i.e., someone who was related to another by being a godparent. So that if I am someone's godfather, the parents of my godchild are my godsibs and vice versa. This originally presumed a kinship or very close friendship, so that gossips were quite intimate with each other. You find the word used frequently in Bocaccio, also in some English works. The word seems to have gone out of use by the late 17th century. (This is without LIU -- doubtless one of the OED possessors can provide more accurate info.)
As to the modern use of the word, gossips are not exclusively women, contrary to what many men may think. There are a couple words I have heard for a male gossip, but offhand, I can't think what they are. Let's hear what y'all have heard or seen.
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Sparteye: Thanks for the reference. The verb form is familiar, going back at least to Lorenz Hart's lyric (and the singular does seem appropriate here) to The Lady Is a Tramp: ''Won't dish the dirt with the rest of the girls." What seemed new to me was dish as a noun, as in "Wait till you hear the latest dish about *****."
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