[Ads-l] "scuttlebutt"

Thu Mar 27 11:12:53 UTC 2025

A couple of early, perhaps transitional, ones from my entry on Wordorigins.org [ https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/scuttlebutt ]( https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/scuttlebutt ):

First, an adjectival use that is either metaphorically referring to the place where rumors are heard or qualitatively indicating the reliability:

“Ess Dee Stowaways.” 19. Our Navy, September 1910. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

"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."

And a few years later as a noun with ambiguous sense, as it could refer to the place or to the rumors themselves:

“The Bulletin Board.” Our Navy, June 1913, 23. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

"These desertions are not caused by discontentment on the ship, but as far as can be learned via 'scuttle butt,' by lack of consideration for this class of vessel in the Department, and the idea of completing a four-year cruise on this Station, everyone believing that after two years they should be sent to duty in the United States, their home country, as the European navies do."

-----Original Message-----
From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2025 10:00pm
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: [ADS-L] "scuttlebutt"

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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