Godfather's gossip

My attention to gossip as a notion worthy of reflection was attracted by a trivial detail: the English etymology of gossip isgod-sib, godfather, or, generally, god parent, ‘denoting—says the English Oxford Dictionary—the spiritual affinity of the baptized and their sponsor’. This intriguing origin alludes to gossip as the performing of an initiation ritual, the creation of an exclusive bond; above all, it bears an uncanny association with the mafia which happens to have been the topic of my research for sometime. I suppose I could have interpretedgod-sibthrough the obvious gender bias as deriving from godmother rather than from godfather; this tallies with the Italiancomareor the Frenchcommèrewhich can also denote a gossip. But I did not think of this possibility at first. Instead, carried away by linguistic speculation, I went to check the etymology of the main Italian word for gossip,pettegolezzo. I was not a little surprised to find that the word comes from a rather less inspiring source. It comes frompeto, to fart. In some northern Italian dialects, venetian, piedmontese and emilian, a common expression, ‘contar tutti i peti’, ‘to tell every fart’, refers to the habit of reporting and speculating about trivial events.