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Scupper Has Military Origins
All efforts to figure out where this verb came from have been defeated, including attempts to connect it to the noun scupper, a 500-year-old word for a drain opening in the side of a ship. (One conjecture, that the blood of shipboard battle was "scuppered" when it was washed down the scuppers, unfortunately lacks backing in the form of any actual evidence of the verb used this way.) All we know for sure is that scupper meant "to ambush and massacre" in 19th-century military slang. Then, just before the century turned, it found its place in a magazine story in the sense of simply "doing (someone) in." The more common modern application to things rather than people being done in or defeated didn't appear until a couple of decades into the 20th century.
Examples of scupper in a Sentence
Chantae Reden, Popular Mechanics, 31 May 2023
Without a transducer scupper or pod, the best option is to use a transducer arm.
—Ric Burnley, Field & Stream, 3 May 2023
Baz Bamigboye, Deadline, 8 Oct. 2024
These efforts were scuppered, for the time being at least, by the war in Gaza, which has spurred despair and anger against Israel among millions of Muslims and others around the war.
—NBC News, 28 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for scupper 
Dictionary Entries Near scupper
Cite this Entry
“Scupper.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scupper. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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