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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
Callum McLennan, Variety, 18 Mar. 2025
The hull is sealed, except for a few small holes called scuppers that act as drains for any water that does find its way onto the deck.
—Chantae Reden, Popular Mechanics, 31 May 2023
Blake Simons, IndieWire, 23 May 2025
Image That could scupper the idea that Europe might return to Russian energy as part of a peace deal.
—Jeanna Smialek, New York Times, 20 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for scupper
Cite this Entry
“Scupper.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scupper. Accessed 11 Jul. 2025.
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