Skuttle

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To deliberately cause a ship to sink by making holes or opening seacocks ; to move rapidly with short, quick steps, often in a secretive or hurried manner
2. To intentionally submerge a vessel by creating openings to let water in ; to hurry or scurry along in a brisk or sneaky way
3. To purposefully flood and sink a boat to prevent capture ; to scuttle about means to dart or scuttle quickly and quietly

Etymology: The word "skuttle" is simply an archaic spelling of "scuttle," and its two main senses come from two entirely different sources that happened to converge in English. The ship sense, to sink a vessel on purpose by opening holes in its hull or its seacocks, comes from Middle French "escoutille," meaning a hatch, which was borrowed from Old Norse "skaut," a word for the corner of a sail or cloth. Spanish "escotilla," meaning hatchway, reached the same place through a different route, ultimately tracing back to a Gothic word for a projecting edge or fringe. The sense of darting along with quick, hurried steps is a separate story. It comes from the same ancestry as the word for a shallow dish or basket: Old English "scutel" meant a dish or platter, borrowed from Latin "scutella," a diminutive of "scutra," a flat tray. Over centuries the spelling and sense of these two words blurred together in English, and the verb picked up its hurried, scurrying meaning from that family of words.

Synonyms: scuttle, hasten, scamper