commess

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 September 14, Bobie-lee Dixon, “Romance writing alive and well in T&T”, in Trinidad Guardian

"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.

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

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.

1987, Hymie Rubenstein, Coping with poverty: adaptive strategies in a Caribbean village

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.

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