Scuttlebutt refers to rumor or gossip—in other words, talk or stories about someone or something that may not be true.

// According to the scuttlebutt in the financial markets, the company will be downsizing soon.

See the entry >

“If highly social otters want the local scuttlebutt, so to speak, they can pick up information through the scents fellow otters leave behind at communal latrines that a group of otters will create and use.” — Lisa Meyers McClintick, The Minnesota Star Tribune, 2 Mar. 2025

When office workers catch up on the latest scuttlebutt around the water cooler, they are continuing a long-standing tradition that probably also occurred on sailing ships of yore. Back in the early 1800s, scuttlebutt (an alteration of scuttled butt) referred to a cask containing a ship’s daily supply of fresh water (scuttle means “to cut a hole through the bottom,” and butt means “cask”); that name was later applied to a drinking fountain on a ship or at a naval installation. In time, the term for the water source was also applied to the gossip and rumors disseminated around it, and the latest chatter has been called “scuttlebutt” ever since.