Talk:Scuttlebutt

Etymology

Like many seagoing terms, scuttlebutt is made up of two words stuck together: scuttle, and butt. A scuttle on board ship was a very small deck opening, just big enough to allow a man to climb through. The lid or cover for that opening was also called a scuttle. The verb "to scuttle" means to make a hole in the bottom of the ship so that the water comes in and sinks the ship. Both the noun and the verb carry that concept of something moving through a small opening. "Butt" comes from the early French word for a target or the backstop behind the target. The term also refers to a large cask or barrel used for storing liquids. There used to be a standard of liquid measurement for wine called a butt, meaning a barrel containing somewhat more than 100 gallons. That idea of wine containers was the source of the word "butler", since that servant's principal responsibility was to care for and serve wine. There was alway wine and rum to drink on board ship, but water was most precious. Water was carried from home port, restocked from distant lands, and collected from rain. Without water the crew would perish. The water on board was carefully stored in butts. So what would happen if you were to make a small hole (a scuttle) in the cask of water (a butt)? Through that opening you could draw off a little water to drink, and you have a scuttled butt, or a scuttlebutt! The scuttlebutt was customarily mounted on a short platform outside the galley, and lashed to the galley bulkhead. Thirsty crewmen could stop by for a drink using a cup hanging nearby, opening the scuttle to fill the cup and then closing it properly so that the precious water did not spill. Sometimes a few crewmen would gather to quench their thirst and talk about shipboard life. The scuttlebutt was the water cooler on board ship, and that is the origin of the expression to describe word of mouth information that may, or may not be true.

Musician reference

I deleted the reference to some musician making a song with some reference to this term, as it it seemed to have little to no relevance to the development of this term. Flapple.

Inconsistent article

This article should be about Hoisting the scuttlebutt. The introductory paragraph is merely a dictionary etymology and should be siphoned off to Wiktionary. __meco (talk) 12:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 external links on Scuttlebutt. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090101102350/http://www.history.navy.mil:80/trivia/trivia03.htm to http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/trivia03.htm
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090101102350/http://www.history.navy.mil:80/trivia/trivia03.htm to http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/trivia03.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 15:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)