Scuttlebutt is the only thing free in the modern era.
— Ugwu Kelvin
Before there was water-cooler talk, there was scuttlebutt.
Scuttlebutts had a gaping hole, so sailors could dip a cup into them. They would often gather around the ship's scuttlebutt to gossip.
The word compounded scuttle, meaning a "hole in a ship," and butt, meaning a "barrel."
Scuttle was a 15th-century term derived from the Spanish escotilla, meaning "hatch."
In battle, when a captain preferred to sink rather than surrender his vessel, he would order sailors to "scuttle the ship" by cutting holes in the hull.
The nautical term bore no relationship to the inland scuttle, meaning "dish," "cup," or "bucket." The inland word was a 14th-century borrowing from the Latin scutella, meaning "platter."
By the 19th century, shipboard rumors came to be known collectively as scuttlebutt, the maritime version of fake news—the lies rival newspaper publishers accused each other of printing in the 19th century.
Inland rumors, on the other hand, when they didn't appear in newspapers were spread through the grapevine in the 19th century. In America, at least.
No sooner than Samuel Morse invented the telegraph (1844) did a company named Western Union string thousands upon thousands of miles of telegraph wire across the country.
During the Civil War, when a soldier wanted to vouch for a suspect rumor, he'd say, "I heard it through the grapevine," meaning "it must be true."
Rumors themselves soon came to be known collectively as grapevine (or what the British would call humbug).
Now that you've heard them, be sure to share these facts with colleagues—on line or at the water cooler.
