[Ads-l] "scuttlebutt"

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS (hence OED) has a 1901 "scuttle butt," which was the name of a gossip
column in a Navy paper. i should have put it in brackets, because it may
simply mean that the column is like a ship's scuttlebutt (a shipboard cask
of drinking water) around which sailors gathered to gossip.

OED's second, unquestionable ex., is from 1933. I think this is also
unquestionable:

1917 _Trench and Camp _ (Ft. Riley, Kans.) (Dec. 8) 1 [Newspapers.com]:
"Citsz  [sic]," the clothes the slackers wear,..."Shuttle [sic] butt" is
doubtful news.

Since this is naval slang in an army vocabulary (in Kansas), it must have
had some previous currency. But it's exceedingly rare in print before the
'30s and rare until WW2.

Cf. too (all from Newspapers.com):

1918 _Custer County Chief_ [Bent Bow, Neb.) (Jan. 3) 1 : Later that day the
scuttle butt (army slang for doubtful news) got out that our boilers leaked.

1919 _Weekly Journal-Miner_ (Prescott, Ariz.) (Dec. 19) 2 : These rumor
[sic] are called "scuttle-butts" [sic], because all hands pass the time of
day at the "scuttle-butt," as a drinking fountain is called in the navy.

1929  _Sacramento Union_ (Oct. 14) 10]: The latest scuttlebutt says: The
Saccy will spend the next two years in the Canal Zone.

1931 _San Pedro  News-Pilot_ (Nov. 24) 1: Scuttle butt reports that the
navy's economy program would hit the rank and file...a knock-out wallop.

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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