Green’s Dictionary of Slang

gup n.¹

gossip.

1843		Bellew Memoirs of a Griffin I 271: ‘They say you are going to get married, is it true, Rattleton?’ ‘Oh, nonsense! mere Barrackpore gup and scandal’.
1847		C. Campbell Rough Recollections III 203: ‘[H]e is fat and foolish, and moreover, sahib, the gup-chup – (gossip) – is, that his wife, in a jealous fit the other eve, because she saw him speak to me, gave him a blow with the dòee (ladle) on the shin, which has lamed him’.
1848		J.H. Stocqueler Oriental Interpreter 94/2: GUP, or GUP-SHUP, the origin of gossip, to which, in India, it bears the closest possible affinity.
1855		J.H. Stocqueler ‘The crime of colour’ in Patriotic Fund Jrnl 17 Feb. 165/1: ‘Well, have you heard the gup (gossip)?’.
1861		Times of India 1 Nov. 2/5: This circumstance has floated up from the depths of memory from a piece of gup industriously set afloat to the effect that our generous Bombay chemists sell their medicines under cost price.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1868		Out of the Meshes I 42: ‘We’ll drive to the club to hear the gup’.
1873		Times of India 1 Feb. 3/3: [What] may, with the fullest share of reason, be called ‘gup’ [is] floating shout, and which is either tasteless and uninteresting, or too highly spiced for general circulation.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1874		J. Grant Fairer Than a Fairy II 52: ‘But it is always the season here for plenty of gup among the Ditchers, as the residents of Calcutta are called,’ Jack remarked.
1883		Times of India 5 June 5/2: The London correspondent of a north country paper is responsible for the following piece of improbable gup.
1883		H. Smart Hard Lines III 135: Our Eastern empire is much addicted to what they term ‘gup,’ whereby they mean gossip, scandal.
1905		Leader (Melbourne) 25 Nov. 29/3: ‘His old nabob of father got heaps of ‘loot’ in the early days. Bled old Rani Jopal of lakhs during the Mutiny,’ chirped the senior lieutenant. ‘All gup. (gossip),’ replied Captain Polhill. ‘Some bebecouf (idiot) invented that lie.’.
1907		J. Conrad Secret Agent (1994) 65: The rest’s mere newspaper gup.
1912		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 5 Oct. 7/1: I hear much gup about the competitions, and (from the ladies’ table especially) whether clubs ought not to have been led at a critical juncture.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 113: Gup: (Hind.—Gup). News. canteen gossip.
1931		B. Lubbock Bully Hayes 160: The gup in the purlieus of Hongkong was that he was making a fortune.
1933		E. Thompson Indian Day 16: ‘Of course, we have only the newspapers and common gup to go by’.
1956		J. Curtis Look Long Upon a Monkey 212: Valerie stared hard at Tony, beseeching him not to fall for that line of gup.
1986		K.A. Abbas Bombay, my Bombay! 70: There was a great ha-ha besides gup-shup over cups of tea and coffee which my elder sister gladly prepared at that unearthly hour.
2002		K. Singh Truth, Love and a Little Malice 410: I cut out time-wasting pastimes such as prayer, meditation, religious ritual, gup-shup with friends, cocktail parties and dinners.