gossip
n.n. talk about other people and their private lives, especially when they are not present. This talk is often not confirmed to be true and can sometimes be unkind.
n. casual conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details not confirmed as being true. Primarily uncountable, but can be countable when referring to a specific instance.
She loves to share the latest town gossip.
He heard some gossip about why his coworker quit, but he didn't want to spread rumors that might be untrue.
Though routinely condemned, historians recognize that gossip has always served as a vital, if unreliable, channel for circulating information and enforcing community norms where formal communication is absent.
Middle English godsybbe (later gossip) reaches back to Old English godsibb, “god-relation”, a transparent compound of god and sib “kin”. It meant simply a godparent, a person bound by baptism rather than blood.
By the 14th century the word had loosened to mean any intimate friend who might be invited to a lying-in; such visitors talked, and by the 16th century the talk itself—first idle chat, then tittle-tattle—had taken over the noun. The shift is paralleled in French commérage, where a sponsor’s title likewise drifted into “scandal-mongering”.