Library / English Dictionary

RUMOR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Gossip (usually a mixture of truth and untruth) passed around by word of mouth

Synonyms:

hearsay; rumor; rumour

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("rumor" is a kind of...):

comment; gossip; scuttlebutt (a report (often malicious) about the behavior of other people)

Derivation:

rumor (tell or spread rumors)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tell or spread rumors

Example:

It was rumored that the next president would be a woman

Synonyms:

bruit; rumor; rumour

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "rumor" is one way to...):

dish the dirt; gossip (wag one's tongue; speak about others and reveal secrets or intimacies)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Derivation:

rumor (gossip (usually a mixture of truth and untruth) passed around by word of mouth)

Credits

 Context examples: 

But the chief grievance that rankled in her soul, and gave an excuse for her unfriendly conduct, was a rumor which some obliging gossip had whispered to her, that the March girls had made fun of her at the Lambs'.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But we are more like to hawk at the Spanish woodcock than at the French heron, though certes it is rumored that Du Guesclin with all the best lances of France have taken service under the lions and towers of Castile.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Such a yell of welcome broke forth when his black beard first protruded round the corner that I began to suspect Tarp Henry was right in his surmise, and that this assemblage was there not merely for the sake of the lecture, but because it had got rumored abroad that the famous Professor would take part in the proceedings.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If I have not said much about it before, it was, of course, that the Professor's earnest desire was that no possible rumor of the unanswerable argument which we carried should be allowed to leak out until the moment came when his enemies were to be confuted.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"The rumor is," whispered Jordan, "that that's Tom's girl on the telephone."

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Wild rumors were circulating about her—how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)