What's the scuttle, butt?

A friend of mine is a teacher, and she recently used the word “scuttlebutt” in telling me a story about her kids.

I have to be honest. I got stuck (which I’m prone to doing) on that one word and didn’t go any further with my friend’s story…my mind wandered. Did she say shufflebutt? Is that the right word? How is it spelled? I suddenly thought of Ariel, from Little Mermaid using a dinglehopper (a fork as a comb). And then I recalled that it was her friend Scuttle who pointed out to her what a dinglehopper was. So, did my friend say scuttlebutt? But then my mind jumped back to shufflebutt, and I got an image of a bunch of highschoolers doing a dance down the hallway…you know, the shufflebutt. (People, this is how my brain works! Scary! Why can't I just follow my friend's story like a normal person?)

So, I had to look the word up. Shufflebut? Scuttelbutte? How is this thing spelled and how should it be used? Where did it come from?

Well, it is, in fact, scuttlebutt. Its initial definition was from the late 1700s and meant an open cask of drinking water that was used for sailors on a ship. Then with time, the word’s meaning transformed; it became “gossip” or “rumors,” because that’s what sailors shared around the cask of drinking water—the scuttlebutt.

Ok, friend. Sorry. I’m good now. Continue your story. What were your kids doing a few days ago?