Grapevine entry

When you hear something through informal exchange, such as gossip, you 'heard it on the grapevine'. The word stems from black communities during the time of slavery, an:

"illicit 'grapevine telegraph'—a network spreading news and correspondence between enslaved communities maintained by mobile bondpeople. Through this system of communication, enslaved men exchanged subversive ideas as well as daily news". (Lussana, 2016)

The first recorded use is from April 17, 1852:

"The following important dispatch was recived [sic] by the ‘Grape Vine’ telegraph—It came to hand just in time for this week’s ‘issoo,’ and the attentive ‘operator’ at Tiffin city has our thanks for his invaluable favor.” This statement is followed by an anonymous, satirical letter to the editor, "full of outlandish misinformation about an election for township offices". (O’Conner and Kellerman)

The Motown song 'I heard it through the grapevine' by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, uses the word as a central motif, symbolizing the spread of information and secrets within a community. In the case of the song, the information is heartbreaking.

At XPUB the expression is interpreted in a visual way, as people overhearing and discussing things because they are in close proximity to each other, like in a vineyard. (de Haan and Arrrigoni, 2026). References Lussana, S. A. (2016). Enslaved Men, the Grapevine Telegraph, and the Underground Railroad', My Brother Slaves: "Friendship, Masculinity, and Resistance in the Antebellum South" (Lexington, KY, 2016; online edn, Kentucky Scholarship Online, 22 Sept. 2016), https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813166940.003.0006

O’Conner, P. and Kellerman, S. (2018). Roots of the grapevine. Grammarphobia. Available at: https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2018/05/grapevine-2.html

de Haan, R. and Arrigoni E. (2026). Personal communication.