"Eschew," "Bollix," "SCUTTLEBUTT," 3

       "Scuttlebutt” is “rumor, idle gossip, unfounded report,” and the OED seems glad to tell us that meaning originated colloquially in the United States in the early 20th century.  But before the colloquial meaning, where does it come from?

       Scuttlebutt, its first published use dated 1805, is “a water-butt kept on a ship’s deck for drinking from.” It's a contraction of “scuttled butt,” “butt” being a cask for water or other liquid and ”scuttled” a nautical term for “having a hole cut in it," from Spanish escotar, “cut out.”
  
       So when you next gather around your water cooler to chat, you can share both the “scuttled butt” and the scuttlebutt.

       Spanish escotar, of course, is also the source for "scuttling" a boat.