/ English Dictionary

RUMOUR

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 ("rumour" is a kind of...):

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

Derivation:

rumour (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 "rumour" 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:

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

Credits

 Context examples: 

I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man?

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

So we are currently in a rumour era with experts carrying out research coming to contradictory conclusions.

(Health threats caused by mobile phone radiation, EUROPARL TV)

Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The ceremony, as shortly announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the previous morning; but it is only now that it has been possible to confirm the strange rumours which have been so persistently floating about.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The rumour that the Prince was to be present had already spread through the clubs, and invitations were eagerly sought after.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is rumoured as we go to press that Mr. John Hector McFarlane has actually been arrested on the charge of the murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This was the letter—A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me, and I write, dear Fanny, to warn you against giving the least credit to it, should it spread into the country.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had changed their minds.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Dark rumours gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an Army coach.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

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