What does “chisme” mean in Spanish?

la amiga que siempre trae el chisme

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A2 Spanish listening practice · Chilean Spanish · Curated for beginners

💡 Did you know?
chisme
Spanish word for gossip
“gossip” — and traer el chisme means literally “to bring the gossip”

Chisme is the everyday Spanish word for gossip, and it’s often paired with traer (“to bring”) or contar (“to tell”), as if gossip were a physical object someone hands over. In this clip, a friend announces her arrival with te tengo un chisme — “I’ve got some gossip for you” — and gets an immediate, eager cuente (“tell me”) in return, prioritizing the chisme over everything else going on.

Someone who constantly trae el chisme can be called chismoso or chismosa, and a chismógrafo (playfully built from chisme plus -ógrafo, like “biographer”) jokes about someone who tracks and reports on everyone’s business. Chisme sits at the center of a whole family of related slang across the Spanish-speaking world for gossip, rumor, and the people who spread it.

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this A2 Spanish listening practice listening practice?

87.5%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Spanish words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday Spanish.

General Spanish frequency

77.5%
Top 1,000
87.5%
Top 2,000
90%
Top 5,000

Spoken Spanish frequency

94.6%
Top 1,000
100%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Conversational vocabulary
This reel’s words appear more often in subtitle-based spoken-Spanish data than in general usage, so it may feel closer to everyday conversation.

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A2 level.

caramba
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000Common in speech
wow
chisme
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
gossip
tiempo para todo, como para el chisme
1×
time for everything, including gossip

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

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