Extra editions of the “Scuttle Butt News” were published at frequent intervals, and each number contained the latest dope as to our future movements.Īnd by 1913 we start to see scuttlebutt used as a noun. It’s unclear whether “Scuttle Butt News” was an actual publication, or just a nickname for rumor:Īt each meal, and when groups gathered together in their part of the ship for a talkfest, speculation was rife as to where we were going and why. Press stories and scuttle butt rumors put the Buffalo in the society class by stating a fair young demoiselle of the Hawaiian group secreted herself in the intricacies of the transport’s lower decks and rode undisturbed into San Francisco.Īnd there is this from William Richmond’s 1912 Nine Months on a Cruise. The rumor committee, otherwise known as the “Scuttle-butt Navigators,” to which every man on board was elected as a life member the moment he promulgated a rumor, was soon actively engaged, and it was definitely settled the Yankee was to become the flagship of the whole fleet, our captain made lord high admiral, and the whole Spanish nation swept off the face of the globe in about thirteen and a half seconds by the chronometer.Īnd in 1910 we get this from the Our Navy newspaper: From an account published by Henry Harrison Lewis from sailors aboard a US Navy vessel during the Spanish-American War of 1898: In the transition from cask to rumor, we see the word first used as an adjective. It is in the US Navy that we see scuttlebutt shift from a jargon term for a physical object to the slang sense of gossip and rumor. There is no part of a frigate where you will see more going and coming of strangers, and overhear more greetings and gossipings of acquaintances, than in the immediate vicinity of the scuttle-butt, just forward of the main-hatch- way, on the gun-deck.īut as steam replaced sails and pipes replaced wooden casks, the need for literal scuttlebutts on-board ship faded, but the word hung on in reference to the conversations and rumors that had once taken took place there. (That analogy is perhaps a bit dated now, though.) This practice is referred to in Herman Melville’s 1850 novel White-Jacket, which is based on his time aboard the frigate USS United States from 1843–44. Naturally, sailors would gather around the scuttlebutt and talk, much as twentieth-century office workers would gather around the watercooler. Therefore, a scuttlebutt is a water cask with a hole punched in it from which water can be drawn. A scuttle is a hole, and a butt is a barrel or cask. The word arises in nautical jargon of the days of sail where a scuttlebutt was literally a cask containing drinking water for those on-board ship. Send us feedback about these examples.Scuttlebutt is slang for gossip and rumor. These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'scuttlebutt.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. 2022 Instead, for the first time in nearly a decade, the scuttlebutt was about record demand, full schedules, and pruning client lists as the need for travel advisers balloons. 2022 This movie stands head and subzero-temp-cold shoulders above its peers in terms of salacious scuttlebutt, however. Mikhail Klimentov, Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2022 The scuttlebutt among journalists is that organizations know stuff about roster moves and partnership status around 2023, while players are kept almost completely in the dark. 2023 There's scuttlebutt that perhaps Treasury and IRS will issue a notice or two before 2023. 2022 Such was the scuttlebutt ahead of Tuesday’s 80th annual Golden Globes. 2023 Amid this turmoil, markets understandably loved the BOE’s intervention, and the scuttlebutt is that the central bank moved in part because big British pension funds and financial institutions were caught on the wrong side of these rapid shifts in market prices. 2022 Is the scuttlebutt around league circles suggesting that the scouting department couldn’t find a star with a telescope? - Greg Moore, The Arizona Republic, 23 Feb. Recent Examples on the Web With that attitude in mind, here are my projections for who and what will be nominated in the Oscars’ top six races, informed by industry scuttlebutt as well as recent nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild of America and Directors Guild of America.
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