The two injunctions implied one another. Gossip, back in my childhood, meant malice; it dabbled in the forbidden. Ev-eryone else's mother said the same things. Some mothers gossiped themselves, while warning their daughters away; others abstained. Women tell of their mothers' lengthy, inaudible telephone conversations with female friends, of satisfied smiles in the aftermath." What did you talk about?" a girl might ask." Oh, nothing, really...": a non-answer epitomizing the mystery of adulthood. Holiday gatherings, in those mythical times, felt rich in their shared detail about the ab-sent: family gossip. Yet we all knew and know: we're not sup-posed to do it, even-or especially-if we enjoy it. But perhaps we enjoy it for good reasons. Some people have thought so (I certainly do); it is worth ruminating about why, about how gossip has been perceived, and how it feels, and what purposes it serves." I don't call it gossip," says a character in a 1978 novel by Laurie Colwin." I call it'emotional speculation.'" Such re-naming attempts to evade negative associations clustering around the word, a word with a vexed history. Definitions of gossip often illuminate the de-finer more than the object of consideration. In its original meaning, gossip implied no gender; it meant" godparent," of either sex. Its increasingly degraded connota-tions follow its intensifying association with women. By the mid-eighteenth century, Dr. Johnson could offer three defini-tions: