![]() This dictionary has the largest database for word meaning. This is not just an ordinary English to Filipino dictionary & Filipino to English dictionary. (16) The scuttlebutt I hear is that Enron was long to the same extent that other energy suppliers and wholesale traders were long. (15) One night in Pescara, we got the scuttlebutt from a pharmacist. (14) Yet the 61-year-old Diller insists there was never anything to the scuttlebutt. (13) I heard rumors that you had returned, Capitan Hinds, but I thought it was mere scuttlebutt. (12) If Hymath could learn of our whereabouts in Mainport, probably just from local scuttlebutt and word of mouth, then anyone else could also find us. (11) Asked to rubbish this scurrilous piece of scuttlebutt BT has sheepishly acknowledged that it is true. (10) There's some scuttlebutt that she took out the whole camp. (9) To test the accuracy of such scuttlebutt, you must next ring the flack representing the subject-company, with a wildly-exaggerated version of the dirt you got from his competitor. (8) I hear scuttlebutt that you got an eyes-only message from High Command over the hyperwave. (6) the scuttlebutt had it that he was a government spy (7) I was getting scuttlebutt that nobody really cared about anymore. (5) Certain scuttlebutt avows that the girls actually do not participate in the makings of many of these records. (3) the scuttlebutt has it that he was a spy (4) Walk more, eat less and include dairy products to help burn fat is the scuttlebutt of late. (2) The scuttlebutt of late is that product labels containing statements such as ‘No Hormones’ or ‘Hormone Free’ are misleading American consumers. Sailors would traditionally exchange gossip when they gathered at the scuttlebutt for a drink of water.(1) There's been some scuttlebutt that the Enterprise is going to be involved in something pretty big, but that's all it is. (denoting a water butt on the deck of a ship, providing drinking water): from scuttled butt. I remember looking up “scuppers” after hearing instructions for dealing with the drunken sailor: “Put him in the scuppers with the hose pipe on him.”Īnd…in case you wondered about “scuttlebutt,” meaning ‘gossip,’ the NOAD says: “ORIGIN early 19th cent. (as military slang in the sense ‘kill, esp. informal prevent from working or succeeding thwart: plans for a casino were scuppered by a public inquiry.Late Middle English: perhaps via Anglo-Norman French from Old French escopir ‘to spit’ compare with German Speigatt, literally ‘spit hole.’ an outlet in the side of a building for draining water.Of course, if had been a better listener on her health care initiative and the Iraq invasion, those two towering issues might not have scuppered her.Īnd most recently from the pen of former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who wrote for the December 5 edition:Ī trade deal between the European Union and hardly threatening Canada was almost scuppered by a recalcitrant Belgian province concerned about the effects of globalization on local workers.Ī hole in a ship’s side to carry water overboard from the deck. It has appeared in the New York Times five times in 2016, first from the pen of columnist Maureen Dowd: writers, who may (wrongly) feel that using a Britishism makes them seem cool. In any case, “scuppered” is gaining a foothold among U.S. The Rent Subsidy Bill had been scuttled without opportunity to work on it.” Ladybird Johnson, White House Diaries, 1965.) “Scuppered” may (wrongly) make journos and subeditors feel that they are using a fresher word than the tired old “scuttled.” I reckon that the recent popularity of “scuppered” is in part due to its aural resemblance to “scuttle”–originally a nautical term meaning to bore holes in the boat for the purpose of sinking it, and in figurative use by the 1888, after which it has been equally popular in the U.S. Never mind about “clawbacks” for the moment–the thing that caught her, and my, interest is “scuppered.” The OED tells us that the verb “scupper” originated in the late nineteenth century as military slang for “to surprise and massacre.” There followed a “colloquial” twentieth-century meaning, “To defeat, ruin, destroy, put an end to.” By 1957–when a writer for The Economist noted, “The suspicion is still alive that there would have been secret rejoicing in Whitehall if the French Assembly had scuppered the common market”–it had entered (British) journalese, in a sense similar to that seen in the Wall Street Journal headline.Īnd it definitely is a Britishism, as seen in this Google Ngram Viewer chart: The ever-observant Nancy Friedman has sent along a screenshot of a Wall Street Journal headline: “Tehran officials say accord is now harder to undo, threaten clawbacks if scuppered.”
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