cancaner

To gossip maliciously about someone's private life — les voisins cancanent sur elle. Literally, it also means to quack like a duck, and the gossip sense plays directly on that image of noisy, repetitive chatter.

• Le village entier cancanait sur leur divorce. — The whole village was gossiping about their divorce.
• Les canards cancanaient bruyamment sur l'étang. — The ducks were quacking loudly on the pond.
• Arrête de cancaner, tu ne sais même pas si c'est vrai. — Stop gossiping, you don't even know if it's true.

Cancaner (gossip) always implies a malicious or petty edge, like the noun cancan (a bit of scandalous gossip) — it's stronger than the neutral bavarder (to chat).

Often confused with bavarder.