GLOSSARY / Murmurings from the witches' coven

WE ARE in a bull market for rumour and scandal at the moment. Indeed, you wonder at times whether the metaphor doesn't need to be stronger - a gold-rush, perhaps, with prospectors whooping and hollering over every faint glimmer in the stream bed, even if most of it turns out to be fool's gold. Whatever image you prefer, the fact that rumour and scandal are tradeable commodities has long been recognised in the language.

You can 'monger' both (monger being a word that usually implies a petty or discreditable trade) and if the demand for innuendo really mounts, some enterprising person will set up a 'rumour-mill' to supply the want. When the authorities are unable to deliver in the way of information or truth, the black market will fill the gap, replacing the devalued currency1 of the state with a private coinage, minted in dark corners and distributed hand to hand. In totalitarian countries 'rumour-mongering' is often as serious a crime as forgery.

The word itself (which derives from the Latin rumor, meaning noise or din) began life in a more respectable way - it has a meaning similar to 'repute' or 'reknown' as well as the modern sense of 'hearsay' or 'unconfirmed report' (for which the OED offers a citation as early as 1382). But it wasn't long before its chief associations were with a particular sort of noise.

In poetical uses the word almost always refers to something which is a composite of many small sounds - the rumour of the trees, for example, or 'the rumorous storm', in which a tiny sound (whispering branches, murmuring waves) is amplified by mass. The same image holds true for crowds, where muttered asides gain volume through repetition.

Shakespeare has the figure of Rumour expand the metaphor when he delivers the induction to Henry IV Part II. 'Rumour is a pipe/ Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures/ And of so easy and so plain a stop/ That the blunt monster with uncounted heads/ The still-discordant wavering multitude/ Can play upon it.'

In other words, even a crowd that is as unharmonious as a badly-played trumpet ('still-discordant wavering') can issue a clear note through Rumour.

Rumour still has a faint note of neutrality to it - the phrase 'have you heard the rumour' carries its own health-warning, a sort of small print which limits the liability of the person who is passing it on. Scandal, on the other hand, has attained an altogether more concrete status. If rumour is a faulty alarm2 on the outside of the house, scandal is a burglar caught red- handed in the living room.

This must be partly because there is decisiveness at the heart of the word's etymology. It derives from the ecclesiastical Latin scandalum, a term for a cause of offence or moral stumbling, but that word in turn comes from the Greek skandalon, a word which is used figuratively in Greek literature to describe a snare or trap for an enemy and which almost certainly comes from the literal word for a trap. It is directly related to the word 'slander', though the two words take very different attitudes to the truth of what they describe.

Scandal has been slightly devalued in this century to mean anything of which the speaker does not approve, a blanket term which can cover anything from dog turds on pavements to a full-blown witches' coven3 meeting in the Cabinet Room. But even in this sloppy application something of its origins remain. In ecclesiastical and theological use it has a very specific meaning as something that might engender doubt in the faithful. If I understand it correctly, the 'scandal of particularity' refers to the difficulty of reconciling the specific human incarnation of Christ with the idea of a universal saviour.

Equally, the behaviour of a religious leader (who may be guilty of incompetence or turpitude) might lure ordinary believers into doubt. And in that sense - 'a perplexity of conscience occasioned by the conduct of one who is looked up to as an example' - even the most devoted Conservative hack might regard recent events as scandalous.

1 From the Latin currere, to run, to flow.

2 From the Italian all'arme, to arms.

3 Variant of convent, from the Latin word convenere, to come together.