commess

English

Noun

commess (uncountable)

1. (Caribbean) Good-natured trouble; mischief; hanky-panky or high jinks.
   • 2012 September 14, Bobie-lee Dixon, “Romance writing alive and well in T&T”, in Trinidad Guardian:

     Romance, tragedy, a simply sweet love story, shame and scandal in the family, bacchanal, commess and sex at its best have been depicted in thousands of romance novels for generations.

   • 2012 April 10, “ASP Maharaj is new SSA director”, in Trinidad & Tobago Express:

     "The alternative would have been to let the country believe that there were all kinds of shady, nefarious bits of commess going on inside here," he said.

   • 2016 September 23, “Recipe – The Ultimate Island Spicy Fried Chicken”, in The St. Kitts-Nevis Observer:

     With an entire house to ourselves, you can only imagine the commess (creative trouble) we got into.

2. (Caribbean) Gossip about local scandals.
   • 1987, Hymie Rubenstein, Coping with poverty: adaptive strategies in a Caribbean village:

     Even the recognition that commess is a pervasive feature of village life does not affect the judgment that it is alien to respectability, to mainstream morality and behavioral propriety. Again villagers are faced with a contradiction between needing to act out their disapproval of deviant sexual activity and their belief that commess is antithetical to good manners and a commitment to mainstream moral and behavioral norms.

   • 2003, Philip Auslander, Performance: Media and technology, →ISBN, page 62:

     Not only is commess judged in this way, but it is related in the minds of Vincentians with such other traditional devices as joking ('ragging', 'making mock'), arguing ('making boderation', 'giving vextation') and ceremonial performances of a more ritualised sort. In other words, Vincentians seem to say that there is an 'art' in gossip just as there is in making a song or speech, or conducting an argument, and they judge the practice of commess accordingly.

   • 2011 June 24, “Calypso queen updates Uncle Jack song”, in Trinidad Guardian:

     It was a year after de election, As they celebrating their success, There came de strangest allegation, T&T name calling in commess;