What does “chisme” mean in Spanish?

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.