Definition
A general public report of uncertain facts circulating without any known authority for its truth. In law, rumor is most significant as an evidentiary concept: it is ordinarily inadmissible as proof of the underlying facts it purports to report, but it may be admissible for the limited purpose of showing that the rumor itself existed — that is, when the existence of the report, rather than its truth, is what matters.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To tell a rumor about; to gossip. As a noun, an unverified story or report circulating among people.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A flying or popular report; the common talk; public fame; a current story passing from one person to another without any known authority for its truth.
The common and legal meanings are broadly aligned, but the legal definition introduces a precise evidentiary distinction that ordinary usage obscures. In everyday speech, a rumor is simply unverified talk. In law, the question is not just whether the rumor is true or false, but whether its very existence is a legally relevant fact — a distinction that determines whether it crosses the threshold of admissibility at all.
Common Confusion
Rumor is sometimes conflated with hearsay, but the concepts are not identical. Hearsay is a formal evidentiary category defined by structure: an out-of-court statement offered for the truth of the matter asserted. Rumor is defined by its social character: collective, unattributed, and without identifiable source. A rumor offered not for its truth but to show that a person had notice of certain information, or that a particular report was circulating at a relevant time, may escape hearsay exclusion while remaining inadmissible on other grounds — and vice versa. The two concepts overlap but do not coincide.
Why It Matters in Research
Rumor appears in legal sources primarily as an evidentiary limit, not a substantive doctrine. Researchers working in trial records, evidence treatises, or appellate opinions should note two distinct investigative threads.
First, the admissibility question: historical courts consistently excluded rumor offered to prove the underlying facts, and this rule appears uniform across the historical dictionaries. But the exception — admissibility to prove the existence of the rumor itself — has real practical weight, particularly in cases involving notice, knowledge, or the state of mind of a party at a particular time. Rapalje & Lawrence articulate this most precisely: rumor may suggest inquiry, and inquiry may ripen into constructive notice. This is critical in property and mortgage research, where the question of what a purchaser "knew or should have known" often turns on what was generally circulating in a community.
Second, the knowledge-and-conduct thread: courts have allowed witnesses to be asked whether a particular rumor had reached their ears because that fact bears on their conduct or motivation, not on the truth of the rumor itself. Researchers tracing evidence doctrine in nineteenth-century sources should watch for this pattern — it predates and anticipates modern doctrine on verbal acts and legally operative words.
In historical sources, rumor sometimes appears in connection with reputation evidence and common fame. These are related but distinct concepts. Common fame or general reputation was, in some contexts (particularly equity and ecclesiastical proceedings), treated as having probative weight that bare rumor did not. Researchers should not read these terms interchangeably when encountering them in older sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in strong agreement on core doctrine: rumor is generally inadmissible as evidence of truth. Bouvier provides the clearest synthesis, distinguishing the rule from its exception with precision. Rapalje & Lawrence add the most practically useful gloss, connecting rumor to the law of constructive notice and explaining the mechanism by which circulating reports can generate a duty of inquiry even when they cannot themselves serve as proof.
Black's (2nd Ed.) notes the inadmissibility rule and cites supporting authority, confirming that this was well-settled doctrine by the late nineteenth century. The 1st edition entry is notably spare, offering only the common definition without substantive legal treatment — a reminder that the depth of coverage in Black's grew significantly between editions and that the 2nd edition is the more reliable research tool for evidentiary doctrine.
None of the historical dictionaries address rumor in the context of defamation, though the connection is natural and Bouvier cross-references libel. Researchers in defamation history should note that what constitutes a "rumor" versus a "report" versus a "publication" carried real legal consequence, and the dictionaries do not resolve that question.
Jurisdictional Note
The inadmissibility of rumor as substantive evidence was broadly uniform across American jurisdictions in the nineteenth century. The notice-by-rumor doctrine — that circulating reports may trigger a duty of inquiry even without constituting direct notice — was recognized in equity courts and remains relevant in property law research, though modern doctrine frames this primarily through constructive notice analysis.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Evidence — Hearsay and Its Exceptions; Constructive Notice.