Thing Not To Do Today: scuttle.

Scuttling is defined in my Collins dictionary as to move about with short hasty steps, but surely there's more to scuttling than that.

Crabs scuttle. Spiders scuttle. There's something furtive about scuttling, something predatory or fearful.

Someone who's scuttling is trying, for one reason or another, to avoid notice.

Ugh!

I definitely don't plan to do any scuttling today. Stately as a galleon, that's me...

...except that galleons remind me of the other sort of scuttling, which is actually even worse than the spidery kind. If you scuttle a ship you let water into it so that it sinks; scuttling a plan stops it for ever.

Ah well. At least we have coal scuttles...though even they are heavy, black and dirty.

I think all I can do with this word is to suggest giving thanks for strolling, dry land, and central heating.

Thing Not To Do Today: scuttle. Scuttle is at root really three words. The coal scuttle word comes from the Old English scutel, trencher, from the Latin scutra, platter; the running-about word might come from scud, but made to sound a bit like shuttle; the sinking-a-ship word comes from the Spanish escotilla, a small opening, from escote, an opening in a piece of cloth, from escotar, to cut out.