scupper n.

early 14c., scope, "utensil for bailing out," from Middle Dutch schope "bucket for bailing water," from West Germanic *skopo (source also of Middle Low German schope "ladle"), from Proto-Germanic *skop-, from PIE *(s)kep- "to cut, to scrape, to hack" (see scabies). Perhaps to English in part from Old French escope, Old North French escoupe. Compare Dutch schop "a spade," related to German Schüppe "a shovel," also "a spade at cards."

The meaning "hand-shovel with a short handle and a deep, hollow receptacle" is from late 15c. The extended sense of "instrument for gouging out a piece" is by 1706. Meaning "action of scooping" is from 1742; that of "amount in a scoop" is from 1832. The colloquial sense of "a big haul," as if in a scoop-net, is by 1893. The journalistic sense of "the securing and publication of exclusive information in advance of a rival" is by 1874, American English, from earlier commercial slang verbal sense of "appropriate so as to exclude competitors" (c. 1850).