All words have a history, an ancestry of some kind.

Sailed across a few....

Most of us know the term scuttlebutt as a folksy way to refer to rumor or gossip, but in nautical nomenclature, a scuttlebutt is an open cask of drinking water or a drinking fountain. The former definition evolved out of the nautical sense, as sailors would engage in idle chat while gathered around their version of the office water cooler.

In sailing, a moonraker is a light square sail set at the top of the mast. But this term is also a demonym for people from Wiltshire, England. As the story goes, a few men from Wiltshire were discovered trying to rake the moon's reflection out of a pond. However, if you ask a Wiltshire native, he or she might tell you another version of the story: the men were raking a pond for kegs of smuggled brandy, and when authorities appeared, the rakers feigned madness.

The term groggy means dazed and weakened or intoxicated, the way one might feel after he or she partakes in a goblet full of its root word grog, which is a mixture of rum and water. The term grog is a reference to a British admiral who ordered his sailors' rum to be diluted; he was nicknamed Old Grog because he wore a grogram cloak.