Gossip

Use in the book

The inherited rivalry passage finds faction even in a small circle of companions. Burton moves from society and corporate bodies to private families and gossips, imagining scarcely three people together without two taking sides. His ensuing examples of neighbours and scholars enlarge the charge, but the later qualification matters: honorable emulation is useful, and the fault lies in its excess. The word gossips therefore does not by itself accuse the companions of malicious reporting, nor does the whole discussion condemn every form of competition.

Ronsse’s reported case gives the relationship a more painful consequence. A gentlewoman quarrels with one of her female friends, who publicly reproaches her with a secret infirmity that Burton deliberately leaves unidentified. The woman then withdraws from company and wastes away in the account’s historical language of melancholy. The noun identifies the friend; the quarrel, disclosure and subsequent suffering are separately narrated acts and effects. The cited letter has not been collated, and the unnamed infirmity should not be turned into a speculative diagnosis.

The occupations catalogue gives the activity a less hostile setting. After women’s household work and gardens, Burton mentions cheerful gatherings, visits and reciprocal invitations, then gossipping among people of lower rank. It can mean social company rather than merely malicious speech. The neighboring prayer-bead remark illustrates his mixed evaluation of occupations: he calls the activity useful against idleness, then rejects it as profane and superstitious from his confessional standpoint. The continuation requires moderation rather than indiscriminate activity. None of this turns the social verb into an automatic moral accusation.

The prating visitor at a recluse’s window is different. Burton places her among people who can gain access despite watchfulness, telling stories about clerics or recommending young men. The marginal wording explicitly includes rumours, so talkative mediation is genuinely at issue here. Yet the passage he assigns to Augustine is identified by the edition as Aelred of Rievaulx’s rule for an enclosed recluse, transmitted under an Augustinian attribution. Burton’s young woman in a nunnery broadens that setting. His accusation and generalization must not be treated as verified descriptions of religious communities, or imported into the friend sense elsewhere.

Two later household examples again name women friends, but their speech has different purposes. In Aristaenetus’s story the neglected lawyer’s wife tells Philinna that, if her husband keeps attending to other people’s affairs and ignoring his own, she will find another advocate. She speaks loudly enough for him to hear. The legal language carries sexual meanings, and the conditional threat is not the same as a reported completed affair. In the water anecdote, a woman friend advises a complaining wife to hold plain water in her mouth during her husband’s scolding. Burton cannot identify the place and preserves the woman’s respectability only by report. He expressly says silence, not the water, produces the result. The preceding and following instructions place the burden of patience on wives; the story is neither medicinal advice nor a neutral account of equal household duties.

Related entries

Conversation: Conversation and social company.

Familiar: The inherited reference to familiar relationships and their other senses.

Jealousy: Jealousy, neglect and the lawyer’s wife’s threat.

Friendship: Friendship and the obligations of companions.

Still: The silence and stillness in the water anecdote.

Places to read

1. Subsection 8. Rivalry, Hatred, Faction and the Desire for Revenge as Causes · paragraphs 15–22rivalry among familiar companions, its social expansion and the explicit defense of honorable, moderate emulation.
2. Subsection 7. A Collection of Other Events That Cause Melancholy: The Death of Friends, Losses, and So On · paragraphs 9–11disclosure, Ronsse’s report of a quarrel with a woman friend, and the wider distress caused by disgrace or exclusion.
3. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraphs 15–21gendered occupations, visits and gossipping; the conditional evaluation of prayer beads and the closing demand for moderation.
4. Subsection 5 Procurers and Love Potions as Causes · paragraphs 60–62assistants, a prating visitor and an enclosed woman; note 9699 retains the Latin account and note 9700 identifies Aelred behind Burton’s Augustinian attribution.
5. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 50–57preceding stories of neglect and jealousy, then the lawyer’s wife’s audible conditional threat to Philinna and its sexual legal wordplay.
6. Prevention Before or After Marriage: Plato’s Community of Wives; Marrying a Courtesan; Love Potions; Brothels; Marrying Someone Equal in Age and Fortune, From a Good Family, Well Educated and of Good Standing; Treating Wives Well; and So On · paragraphs 60–62restricted social freedom, the woman friend’s water trick, the express silence-versus-water explanation and continued household restrictions.

In this edition

The inherited phrases remain “amongst Gossips” → “among familiar companions” and “one of her Gossips” → “one of her female friends”. The same possessive phrase becomes “one of her women friends” in the Philinna and water stories. These renderings preserve the social relationship; public reproach, a deliberate threat and friendly advice remain separately narrated actions.

“Gossipping among the meaner sort” becomes “the gossiping of the lower ranks”: the modern supplies the article and recasts the relation to the social group. “Some prating Gossip” becomes “some chattering gossip”; prating supplies chattering, while the noun remains to be explained from the local company and tales. Keeping gossip in that translation does not justify assigning its most accusatory modern sense to every other occurrence.

gossip · Gossips · local use 1

Printed “Gossips” (English; lemma).

Familiar companions or associates, often women in social company.

Here: Gossips identifies the companions among whom factions arise. Their rivalry is described separately; the noun does not itself mean habitual spreaders of rumours.

Context: Burton extends rivalry across social ranks and into small groups; the following discussion expressly allows honorable emulation and condemns excess rather than every wish to excel.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: amongst Gossips

Modern rendering: among familiar companions

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Amongst supplies among; Gossips is explicated as familiar companions.

gossip · Gossips · local use 2

Printed “Gossips” (English; lemma).

Familiar female companions or friends.

Here: The possessive phrase identifies a woman’s friend. Quarrelling and public disclosure of an undisclosed infirmity are acts performed by that friend, not the lexical definition of Gossips.

Context: Burton reports Ronsse’s case of a twenty-five-year-old woman becoming withdrawn and wasting after public reproach; the source remains uncollated and the infirmity unnamed.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: one of her Gossips

Modern rendering: one of her female friends

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “gossips” (English; lemma).

Citation key: gossip.

Here: Philinna is one of the wife’s women friends. The wife deliberately speaks loudly enough for her husband to hear, so this is not necessarily a secret passed by a habitual rumour-monger.

Context: Burton reports the lawyer’s wife in Aristaenetus threatening another lover if neglect continues. The legal language is sexual wordplay; the threat is not an established completed act, and the Greek passage remains uncollated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: one of her gossips

Modern rendering: one of her women friends

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “gossips” (English; lemma).

Citation key: gossip.

Here: The speaker’s woman friend is also called her neighbour. The relationship makes advice possible; gossips does not name the water, a rumour or a medicine.

Context: Burton cannot identify the woman’s location and calls her respectable by report. The story expressly attributes the effect to silence rather than water, within an unequal instruction that wives bear husbands’ anger.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: one of her gossips

Modern rendering: one of her women friends

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

gossip · gossipping

Printed “gossipping” (English; lemma).

Social visiting, gathering or conversing with familiar company.

Here: The verbal noun can include social meetings and visits, not only malicious talk. Meaner sort identifies lower social rank; the modern supplies the definite article and recasts among as of.

Context: Burton mentions rather than develops these occupations after women’s household activities. His ensuing praise of prayer beads for occupation is immediately checked by his Protestant objection; the continuation calls for moderation of body and mind.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: gossipping among the meaner sort

Modern rendering: the gossiping of the lower ranks

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Gossipping becomes the gossiping; among the meaner sort becomes of the lower ranks, a construction-level recasting with a supplied article.

gossip · Gossip

Printed “Gossip” (English; lemma).

A familiar female visitor or companion, here acting as a teller of tales.

Here: Prating supplies chattering. The context describes the visitor telling stories and praising possible lovers, and the margin feeding rumours: talk and possible sexual mediation are explicit local activities, not inferred from every occurrence of gossip.

Context: Burton attributes the observation to Augustine, but the identified source is Aelred’s rule for a recluse transmitted among Augustinian works. Burton generalizes an enclosed recluse into a young woman in a nunnery; these are attributed moral warnings, not verified accusations against nuns.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: some prating Gossip

Modern rendering: some chattering gossip

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Some remains some, prating becomes chattering and Gossip remains gossip; the local gloss explains the retained noun.