scuttle [OE] There are three main scuttles in English. The one you keep coal in meant a dish in Old English and comes via Old Norse from Latin scutella ‘dish’. The one for moving [LME] is probably from dialect scuddle from scud [M16th] ‘move quickly’, which may have come from scut [ME] originally meaning a hare, but now better known as the tail of a hare or rabbit. This would give scud an original meaning similar to the modern informal ‘to hare along’ for to move quickly. The scuttle of a ship is first found as a noun meaning ‘hatchway’ at the end of the 15th century, and only as a verb ‘to sink’ from the mid 17th. It may come, via French, from Spanish escotilla ‘hatchway’.