scuttlebutt noun gossip, rumours US,1901 From the name of the drinking-water cask found on board a ship, around which sailors gathered to gossip.
Scuttlebutt down in the catacombs is that a lot of powerful Catholics, including those responsible for the Society of the Felicitator, are unhappy about those reforms. — Tom Robbins, Another RoadsideAttraction, p. 180, 1971