We're asking the big question. What's the origin of the universe? Linguistically speaking,
that is, in John D. Barrow's book of universes , he traces the word back to the Latin universum,
which comes from unus meaning one and verses meaning to turn or roll. It may have originally
meant something like everything rolled into one, or it may reference ancient cosmology,
where the outer The sphere of the heavens rotated and moved everything inside of it.
Either way, it's a poetic way to describe, well, everything. A gossip began as godsib, a
godparent or a close family friend, someone who acted as a sponsor at a baptism. By the
14th century, it could refer to any familiar acquaintance, especially women who attended
births. Eventually it came to mean friendly chatter. Then idle talk and rumor. So gossip
didn't start a scandal, it started as community. Calling someone nice wasn't always a
compliment. It once meant foolish from the old French n or ignorant from the Latin neschius.
Over the centuries, it went through a variety of meanings, timid, fussy, delicate, precise,
and finally, by the 19th century, pleasant, which stuck.