scandalmongery

English

Etymology

scandalmonger +‎ -y

Noun

scandalmongery (usually uncountable, plural scandalmongeries)

1. The act of listening to and telling scandalous rumors.
   • 1887, George Moore, Parnell and his Island:

     As may be supposed, the business could not but suffer by these long hours passed in drunkenness and scandalmongery, but Mrs, Eusville had three daughters to bring out, and she hoped — when she had disposed of her shop, and her feet were set on the redoubtable staircase of Cork Hill — that her aristocratic friend would extend to her a corial helping hand.

   • 1971, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Frank Olin Copley, On Old Age: And On Friendship, page ix:

     Biographical information about them must be pieced together from historians whose prejudices are entirely too obvious, from biographers with a distressing penchant for scandalmongery, from the casual side remarks of other authors, and — perhaps most unreliably of all — from the works of the authors themselves.

   • 2011, Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta, →ISBN:

     And I fear scandalmongery. People would spread malicious tales and calumnies about me.

2. A scandalous rumor that is spread in such a manner.
   • 1913, The Wireless World - Volume 1, page 110:

     You must own their lot has not fallen in a fair ground, and as far as I can make out, although their visits are productive of a terrible amount of gossip and scandalmongery, they have never been found out in thieving or roguery.”

   • 1924, The Emu: Official Organ of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union:

     In consequence of this scandalmongery, all Parrots were forbidden by the aerial powers to live on Ono, and it has since then been of common knowledge that any that flew that way died shortly after arrival.

   • 1957, Edward B. Scott, The Saga of Lake Tahoe:

     No evidence supports this scandalmongery.