English, at its most prosaic, can appear wrapped in poetic mantle. Sets of rhyming words will show up in mid-sentence and nobody, not even the anti-poetry minded, will raise objections. Helter-skelter, for example. As in: ‘It rained last week and those caught in the downpour ran helter-skelter for cover.’ Helter-skelter. A burst of rhyme in a stream of prose?

English is littered with these tiny ‘islands of rhyme’. There’s pell-mell, willy-nilly, pitter-patter, wishy-washy, happy-chappie (which I suspect is an Aussie-invention) and heebie-jeebies (which is American) to name a few.

I used to work with a person who, in a sentence, rhymed bucket with another two-syllable word beginning with ‘f’ but we won’t go there for now. Besides, in his defence, English was his second language.

The tiny rhyming pair I’d like to focus on today, however, is tittle-tattle. Its etymology is 16th century English which means, as a new word in fashion at the time, it got used quite a lot. Which is true. Even the bard — the great Shakespeare — resorts to its use. In his play Henry V, he has one of his characters, Fuellen, (a Welsh captain and leader of Henry’s troops) say: “If you would take the time to study the tactics of Pompey the Great, I can tell you that you would find no tittle-tattle or pibble-pabble.”

Shakespeare, of course, being Shakespeare, he is not content merely with one pair of rhyming words. He must throw in another and so we have pibble-pabble, which I suspect hasn’t been used much since. Tittle-tattle, however, has survived and is alive and well even in the 21st century.

What indeed is ‘tittle-tattle’ those who haven’t come across the word might well ask. To reduce it in size to just one word: Gossip. The dictionary defines it as, ‘casual conversation about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as true.’

Reporters, of course, are trained in the knowledge that ‘tittle-tattle’ won’t work in an article. Details need to be confirmed and re-confirmed prior to printing. As is the case with names. Or, it used to be the case. If Mr Philip from the solicitor firm Philip & Phillip spells his name with one ‘l’ and the other Phillip with two, then it was incumbent on the reporter to cite the correct Philip/Phillip in the report. I get the feeling that the spelling rules have been relaxed a tad these days. I say this because, increasingly, I have come across names misspelled, and the defence for this has been laid at the door of the ‘fat finger’. Google it.

In all my years of perusing children’s stories, I have only ever heard of Dick Whittington and his Cat. But the other day, I might have encountered his twin, Sick Whittington, who didn’t own a cat but, thanks to the said ‘fat finger’ possessed a ‘vat’. It’s easy from there to imagine how poor Whittington got sick.

What’s all that got to do with tittle-tattle? Nothing much, to be honest. Put it down to one of those sly by-lanes columnists venture down briefly before getting lost. So, to return, helter-skelter and pell-mell, to tittle-tattle ... the word, I discover, can be used both as a noun and a verb. A person can be a ‘tittle-tattle’ or be engaged in the act of tittle-tattling. Some of us have either engaged in the said practice at some moment in our lives, or know of someone who has (at some moment in theirs).

“What does one do when one encounters a tittle-tattle?” my prankster friend Barney asked me, recently. After hearing that he’s been critical of my style of writing (behind my back, terming it ‘liquidly languid’ and opining that ‘there’s a difference between writing for a living and writing for immortality’) I really want to reply, “Take a look in the mirror, Barney.”

But that would sound hoity-toity, so I merely look at him and let my enigmatic smile do the talking.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.