idle rumor

In numerous cases—indeed, no doubt in a majority—the evidence, while possibly justifying suspicion, was of too loose and undefined a character to justify condemnation, for every idle rumor was taken up, and any flimsy pretext which led to prosecution assumed importance when the inquisitor found himself bound to show that he had not acted unadvisedly, or when he had in prospect fines and confiscations for the benefit of the faith.

He had acted foolishly, and followed an idle rumor without sufficient thought.

"It was only idle rumor," Peter Gross deprecated.

As an idle rumor spreads and grows among better cultured people so superstition held in power these watchful Indians.

Indeed, he pressed this subject so much upon his professional brethren, that, at a medical club at Redborough to which he belonged, he was threatened to be expelled if he persisted in harassing them with a proposition which they then conceived had no foundation but in popular and idle rumor, and which had become so entirely distasteful to them.