A water cooler is the machine people gather round to chat and drink. Water cooler talk.
The talk rather than the water is what the phrase now refers to in most offices. Water cooler conversation is where most of an organisation's real information moves.
1nounwater coolerThe machine people gather round to chat and drink.
“The water cooler was moved and the whole floor stopped talking.”
water cooler is a machine.
Water plus cooler; the gossip sense parallels the older naval scuttlebutt.
For the gossip sense, compare scuttlebutt, of similar origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Office & Admin