Saturday, April 17, 2010

Scuppered or scuttled?

Paul Berg writes: "In today's Globe, writing about the Bhutto assassination investigation, Associated Press writer Chris Brummitt offers the following: 'Lack of political will and fear of upsetting powerful vested interests will probably scupper any efforts to find Benazir Bhutto’s assassins.'"

Didn't the writer mean "scuttle"? he asks, citing Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. There scupper is defined as "an opening cut through the bulwarks of a ship so that water falling on deck may flow overboard" while scuttle means "sink or attempt to sink [a ship] by making holes through the bottom" and also "destroy, wreck or scrap."

Under scupper the verb, however, M-W does give the sense "do in" -- a sense that's way more common in British English than American. (And yes, Chris Brummitt -- judging by his appearance on "The PBS  NewsHour" -- speaks British English.) A Nexis news search returns just three uses of scupper in the past month in US newspapers and wires, versus roughly 400 in UK publications. 

Scupper has somewhat murky origins, it's true. The OED's first sense for the verb is "To surprise and massacre," a usage labeled military slang and dating to 1885. The meaning "defeat, ruin" shows up by 1918, but the first guess at etymology comes only later, with the 1993 additions to the dictionary: "The connection [to the noun scupper] is perh[aps] explained by Fraser & Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words (1925)," which noted that "A man killed in action or falling in heavy weather would naturally roll into the scuppers."

The 1993 additions also include a new definition of scupper, dated to the 1970s: "To sink (a vessel) deliberately; = SCUTTLE ... (with which it is sometimes confused)."

So in the OED's view, "scupper a ship" is a (fairly recent) mistake for "scuttle a ship." But "their plans were scuppered" is standard usage, nearly a century old.

I'm going to nominate scupper vs. scuttle for Lynneguist's "Difference of the day." Thanks for the tip, Paul!


Q. Pheevr said...

Ah, so that's where the Antelope's drunken cook was....

empty said...

You know, I wouldn't have thought I was at all confused about this pair of words, but I now realize that I have been, just a bit, and that "scudder" is part of the problem.

Looking up "scud", I find, irrelevantly, that in addition to the meanings that have anything to do with being blown along by the wind, it can mean (Century Dictionary, sense 15) Dirt, lime, and fat left in the grain of a skin after it comes from the puer.

Harry Campbell said...

Hence, presumably, the Scottish expression "in the (bare) scud" meaning naked.

lynneguist said...

For the record, this was today's Difference of the Day:

hmscollingwood said...

As a former Harland & Wolff Shipyard, Belfast, ship's plumbing apprentice, I often went out to berthed vessels and building yards to fit new 'scuppers'. They were usually 2-3" galvanised pipes fitted by flange to the underside of exposed decks to drain off rain or sea splash. Nothing whatever to do with scuttling a ship, which is to sink a ship by opening the 'sea cocks' in the bottom of a ship. Sometimes, even in a floating ship this is necessary: when the hull has been breached on one side and some compartments are flooded, which often happens with battle damage or running aground. Scuttle or sea cocks are then opened in evacuated bottom compartments on the opposite side to stabilise the vessel. Sometimes, the Captain or First Mate, will order the pumping of the ship's oil into an empty opposite compartment, if it is safe, to avoid the corrosive effects of sea water. Of course, that other notorious ship of Harland & Wolff, Titanic, would not have been saved by this as her portside hull was breached by contacting the undersea edge of the iceberg and grounding on its undersea shelf, on her fateful maiden voyage. "The collision had forced the metal to buckle inwards and popped rivets below the waterline, opening the first five compartments (the forward peak tank, the three forward holds and Boiler Room 6) to the sea". There is further evidence to suggest that two bottom plates fell off as a result of her grounding, and probably many more crushed inwards, which further weakened her 'back', causing Titanic to split in two before she slipped beneath the surface.