Shit

Shit or Shite is a Vulgar word in Modern English vulgarly denoting feces, the byproduct of digestion. It is a native English word, but following the Norman Conquest, Norman, Anglo-Norman, French, and Latin terms for many common objects and bodily functions began to be seen as more distinguished than native words, and thereafter feces became the accepted English noun, to defecate became the accepted English verb, and shit was no longer used in polite company.

Etymology

Scholars trace the word back to Old Norse origin (skīta), and it is virtually certain that it was used in some form by preliterate Germanic tribes at the time of the Roman Empire. It was originally adopted into Old English as scitte, eventually morphing into Middle English schītte. The word may be further traced to Proto-Germanic *skit-, and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *skheid-, ". Ancient Greek language had 'skor' (root 'skat-' from which modern Greek 'skatá'). The words 'skítur' (noun) and 'skíta' (verb), still exist in the Icelandic language today.

Popular Internet Culture False Etymology

A relatively popular urban legend of sorts has arisen to explain the word as an acronym (similar to the false etymology of the word "fuck"). As the story goes, the word can be traced back to merchant sailing vessels from the 17th to 19th century. Supposedly, bales of dry manure were once transported in the holds of these ships. If the bales were stored low enough, they would come into contact with water that inevitably leaked into the bilge. The water would then cause the manure to decompose, creating methane gas as well as a rather bad odor. The unlucky sailor sent to investigate the smell would of course take with him a candle or lantern to light the dark area below deck. The open flame would ignite the methane/air mixture in the confined space, causing a massive explosion and sinking the ship. When the cause of these strange accidents was discovered, bales of manure to be transported by ship were marked "store high in transit" to remind those loading them to keep them above the bilge water. This was eventually shortened to "S.H.I.T." and this is how the story claims the word was born. While interesting, this story has little historical backing and most likely originates from a 1999 Usenet post. [1]

Usage

The word shit (or sometimes shite [to rhyme with bite] in Scotland, Ireland, Northern England and Lincolnshire), is used by English speakers, but it is usually avoided in formal speech. A less vulgar substitute is crap, which while still impolite and/or emphatic, is not considered obscene. The correct vernacular usage of crap is mostly identical, with certain key exceptions (see below).

In the word's literal sense, it has a rather small range of common usages. An unspecified or collective occurrence of feces is generally shit or some shit, a single deposit of feces is sometimes a shit or a piece of shit, and to defecate is to shit, or counterintuitively to take a shit. While it is common to speak of shit as existing in a pile, a load, a hunk and other quantities and configurations, such expressions flourish most strongly in the figurative. For practical purposes, when actual defecation and excreta are spoken of in English, it is either through creative euphemism (pinching a loaf, laying some cable, seeing Mr. Brown off to the coast, swinging an opossum, burying the ostrich, squeezing off a round, dropping the kids off at the pool (sometimes dropping the Huxtabtables off at the pool), brewing up a pot of s.h.i. tea, laying a fresh man-biscuit, jettison a spent carbon-fuel rod, making a sacrifice to the toilet gods, building a house for President Lincoln, releasing the prisoners, lighting a bum cigar, cutting a log, dropping a deuce, making sausages, making butterfinger bb's, punching a grumper, busting a grumpy, releasing the demons, dropping a charge (or depth charge), greeting the night, splitting the corn, taking a ride down the sunshine highway, squatting over a summer sausage, seeing a man about a horse (or wallaby), planting a brown carrot, giving birth to a food baby, dropping a dagger, paying tribute to Dutch porn, taking the Browns to the Super Bowl, bending a biscuit, negotiating the release of the chocolate hostages, witnessing the Brown ghost of Raynham Hall, painting the wagon, making a deposit at the doodoo bank, or bombing the harbor) or with a vague and fairly rigid literalism. In the United States Army, the euphemism 'executing a class-one download' has become popular. Other substitutes for the word shit in American English include sugar and shoot.

Shit carries an encompassing variety of figurative meanings. Of these, perhaps the most common are generic expressions of displeasure (as in, Shit!), fear (Oh, shit!), or surprise (Holy shit!).

Interestingly, in slang, prefixing the article the to shit gives it a completely opposite definition, meaning "The Best", as in "My mom's hashbrowns are the shit," or "Oregon Trail is the dope shit."

Shit denotes trouble, as in, I was in a lot of shit; low quality, as in, That disk drive is shit (see "piece of shit" below); unpleasantness, as in, Those pants look like shit, or This casserole tastes like shit; or falsehood or insincerity, as in, Don't give me that shit, or You're full of shit or surprised anger Jim is totally going to flip his shit when he sees that we wrecked his bike. Sometimes using shit to denote anger will be heard in the phrase shit a brick. The word bullshit also denotes false or insincere discourse. (Horseshit is roughly equivalent, while chickenshit means cowardly, batshit indicates a person is crazy, and going apeshit indicates a person is entering a state of unbridled rage.). Are you shitting me!? is a question sometimes given in response to an incredible assertion. An answer that reasserts the veracity of the claim is, I shit you not.

Shit can also be used to establish superiority over another being. The most common phrase is "Eat Shit!" symbolizing the hatred toward the recipient. Some other personal word may be added such as "Eat my shit" implying truly personal connotations.

Shit can also be used as a comparative noun; for instance, This show is funny shit or This test is hard shit, or That was stupid shit. These three usages (with funny, hard, and stupid or another synonym of stupid) are heard most commonly in the United States. Note that shit is both a positive and negative thing in these examples, shit being apparently very funny (a positive thing) and in the second and third examples very hard (as in, difficult- a negative thing to be) or very stupid. Note also that in a phrase like this, the speaker doesn't include the term as before the comparison- saying that something is as funny as shit would sound like a criticism to anyone reading the term (shit not being a very funny thing to be), although if spoken could be understood along with the spirit it's said in. Using the as changes these phrases from a simple colloquialism to a literal statement.

Shit can comfortably stand in for the terms bad and nothing in many instances (Dinner was good, but the movie was shit. You're all mad at me, but I didn't do shit!). Many usages are idiomatic. The phrase, I don't give a shit denotes indifference. I'm shit out of luck usually refers to someone who is at the end of their wits or who has no remaining viable options. That little shit shot me in the ass, suggests a mischevious or contemptuous person. However, in such a nominative construction, crap (as in, That little crap shot me in the ass) is not accepted in vernacular English. Of further note is that little shit is common as a term of opprobrium, while big shit is unfamiliar, and that direct scatological appellations are rarely applied to females, for whom gender-specific terms such as bitch or cunt more readily accrue. (However, in Britain and Australia, the term cunt is used to refer to men very much more frequently than to women)

The term piece of shit is generally used to classify a product or service as being sufficiently below the writer's understanding of generally accepted quality standards to be of neglible and perhaps even negative value. The term piece of shit has greater precision than shit or shitty in that piece of shit identifies the low quality of a specific component or output of a process without applying a derogatory slant to the entire process. For example, if one said "The inner city youth orchestra has been a remarkably successful intiative in that it has kept young people off the streets after school, and exposed them to culture and disclipline thereby improving their self esteem and future prospects. The fact that the orchestra's recent rendition of Tchaikofsky's Manfred Symphony in B minor was pretty much a piece of shit should not in any way detract from this." The substitution of shit or shitty for pretty much a piece of shit would imply irony and would therefore undermine the strength of the statement.

In Get your shit together! the word 'shit' may refer to some set of personal belongings or tools, or to one's wits, composure, or attention to the task at hand. He doesn't have his shit together suggests he is failing rather broadly, with the onus laid to multiple personal shortcomings, rather than bad luck or outside forces. Shit can even be a plain, neuter pronoun for basically anything in vulgar speech. For instance, in There is some serious shit going down shit can easily be replaced by stuff with no real loss of meaning (the same goes for Get your shit together! and the like).

"When the shit hits the fan" is usually used to refer to a specific time of confrontation or trouble, which requires decisive action. This is often used in reference to combat situations and the action scenes in movies, but can also be used for everyday instances that one might be apprehensive about. "I don't want to be here when the shit hits the fan!" indicates that the speaker is dreading this moment (which can be anything from an enemy attack to confronting an angry parent or friend). "He's the one to turn to when the shit hits the fan." is an indication that the person being talked about is dependable and will not run from trouble or abandon their allies in tough situations. The concept of this phrase is simple enough, as the actual substance striking the rotating blades of a fan would cause a messy and unpleasant situation (much like being in the presence of a manure spreader). Whether or not this has actually happened, or if the concept is simply feasible enough for most people to imagine the result without needing it to be demonstrated, is unknown. Another example might be the saying "Shit rolls down hill" particularly illustrating, the consequences of putting your superiors in a bad position at work. There are a number of anecdotes and jokes about such situations, as the imagery of these situations is considered to be funny. This is generally tied-in with the concept that disgusting and messy substances spilled onto someone else are humorous.

While the most common uses of shit are figurative, the unpleasant substance to which the term literally refers is seldom entirely absent, and thus most uses of shit have some degree of pejoration. But this is far from a universal rule: In some styles of discourse, shit can replace nearly any noun. In the sentence, "I bought a bunch of shit at the store today", shit is merely a casual intensification of the term, stuff. Similarly, Check that shit out! connotes surprise at some sort of stuff or activity that could very well be pleasant. Give me a bite of that shit implies a deliciousness notably absent from the literal substance. It's common for someone to refer to an unpleasant thing as hard shit (You got a speeding ticket? Man, that's some hard shit), but the phrase tough shit is used as an unsympathetic way of saying too bad to whomever is having problems (You got arrested? Tough shit, man!) or as a way of expressing to someone that they need to stop complaining about a negative thing that occurred to them and just deal with it (Billy: I got arrested because of you! Tommy: Tough shit, dude, you knew you might get arrested when you chose to come with me.) Note that in this case, as in many cases with the term, tough shit is often said as a way of pointing out someone's fault in his/her own current problem. To drug users, shit almost always refers to a drug being discussed. This was a secret code in the early 60s, and though most people now understand phrases like "I bought some good shit today, I can't wait to try it", the phrase is still common.

Perhaps the only constant connotation that shit reliably carries is that the referent to which it applies holds some degree of emotional intensity for the speaker. Whether offense is taken at hearing the word varies greatly according to listener and situation, and is related to age and social class: elderly speakers and those of (or aspiring to) higher socioeconomic strata tend to use it more privately and selectively than younger and more blue-collar speakers. Moreover, in some colloquial speech, calling something or someone the shit is laudatory. For instance, Dave's new car is the shit, suggests that Dave's new car is very good, or very cool. This meaning is also essentially a substitution for the term stuff, but is also similar to the vernacular usage of bad to mean dangerous and deserving of respect. Crap is unknown in such locutions.

In polite company, sometimes the backronym Sugar Honey in Tea or Sugar Honey Iced Tea is used.

Shit (like fuck) is often used more to add emphasis than meaning: Shit! I was so shit-scared of that shithead that I shit-talked him into dropping out of the karate match. The term, to shit-talk, connotes bragging or exaggeration (whereas to talk shit primarily means to gossip [about someone in a damaging way] or to talk in a boastful way about things which are erroneous in nature), but in such constructions as the above, the word shit often functions as an interjection. Euphemisms for shit in this usage include shoot, shucks, and in Hiberno-English sugar and its Irish equivalent siúcra (pronounced /ʃuːkrə/.

Shit itself can be a quasi-euphemism, many illicit drugs (notably hashish) being referred to as shit. To be shitfaced is to be extremely drunk.

"Shit" can also be combined with other words to denote the type of feces one has. For instance, "Snake shit" describes feces that are long and slender in shape thus reminiscent of a snake's appearance. "Shapeepee" or "Shit pee pee" is another word for diarrhea or can be used to describe feces that are almost entirely of liquid composition.

"Shit Alley" is often the term of an undersirable place to live. The term originated from Alumni Hall at the University of Notre Dame, home of some of the smallest dorm rooms on campus and also located next to the dumpster.^{[citation needed]}

The verb to shit

The verb, to shit, is most commonly used to refer to the literal act of defecation, but it can also mean to treat badly or to humiliate (I got shit on for being late, He shat all over my project), or to produce something carelessly (I was hoping for a project we could all be proud of, but Dave just goes and shits something out at the last minute).

The preterite and past participle of shit are attested as shat, shit, or shitted, depending on dialect and, sometimes, the rhythm of the sentence. In the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, shitten is used as the past participle; however this form is very rare in modern English. In American English shit as a past participle is always correct, while shat is generally acceptable and shitted is uncommon. In British English, shat is generally the preferred form.

Other parts of speech

Non-native English speakers should take note that shit and fuck often serve different uses as expletives, such that (for instance) the present active participle, shitting, is rarely used emphatically. Ex.: In the sentence, I was so shit-scared of that shithead that I shit-talked him into dropping out of the shitting karate match, the phrase, shitting karate match, would be incomprehensible to native speakers except in suggesting a singularly unsanitary form of karate. (In the UK, phrases such as shitting hell as an emphatic are not unknown.) A correct and clear vulgarism would be, the fucking karate match. Similarly, shit is never used as an infix: While in-fucking-credible is comprehensible English, in-shitting-credible is not. Shit you! is likewise a puzzling and ineffective expression of defiance. It is not uncommon, however, to encounter an adjective constructed partially of the word shit, such as "Shittastic" or "Shittacular".

Sometimes in family movies, some actors let the word shit slip, but then stretch it into a harmless word. An example of this occurring are in Spy Kids, where Carmen is heard to say, "Oh, shit...take mushrooms." The euphemism was also written into Spy Kids 2, where Carmen says, "You are full of shiitake mushrooms." (The crowd was offended anyway.)

In parts of Canada, a "shit-disturber" is a person who deliberately causes trouble or who is aggravating.
A "shit stirrer" is used to mean the same thing in London and North Kent areas of England, as well as in Australia.
A "shitload" or a "shit-ton" is a whole bunch of something, eg. "I have a shitload of laundry to do today" or "I have hardly any wine, but I have shit tons of beer in the house".
"Shitkickers" are large boots or cowboy boots, or the cowboy (particularly if the person wearing the cowboy boots does not actually herd cattle).
A "Shit-kicking job" refers to low-paid blue-collar work, or an employee low in a company hierarchy, eg "no I am not a manager, I'm just a shit kicker".
"Shit in a bag and punch it" is a common colloquial phrase to indicate frustratation with a situation or question, eg "John has been arrested again", "Oh shit in a bag and punch it"

"Shit" is very commonly used in the Dutch language, expressing a general discomfort with a certain situation ("Shit!"), or to describe the situation itself. ("I'm in deep shit"). It is not as offensive to Dutch speakers as it is to English, but one would not use it in a formal situation. The use of it by children is discouraged by adults, teaching them substitutes like chips (In Dutch pronounced as the English ships). "Shit" is most commonly used as a replacement of the more obscene word "kut", meaning "cunt", "Kut" is mostly used in the same way as "shit" is in the Dutch language.

Some users of English in the Far East use the expression nose shit to describe the fragments of dried nasal mucus which occasionally exit (deliberately or accidentally) from the nostrils. Similarly, expressions eye shit and less commonly ear shit describe discharge of the eye, dried or still moist, and ear wax, respectively. These are all direct calques of the Chinese expressions for these bodily outputs.

Acceptance

Recently the word shit has become increasingly acceptable on American cable television and radio (in Britain and Australia this has been the case for some time, although fuck and cunt remain mainly taboo). It is believed that the first person on British TV to say 'shit' was John Cleese of Monty Python comedy troupe in the late 60's, as he mentions himself in a eulogy to Graham Chapman.

On the game show Legends of the Hidden Temple, there is a controversy over whether Kirk Fogg said "Oh, shit, he's tired", and it slipped past the censors in the episode the Applewood Amulet of Emiliano Zapata.

A good example is the episode of South Park "It Hits the Fan" originally aired on June 20, 2001. It is one of the most notable episodes of the show, due to its repeated use of the word shit. (To be precise, the word is used 162 times: a counter in the corner of the screen tallies the repetitions.) The moral of this episode (signaled by the cheesy music and Stan or Kyle saying "I learned something today") is that swearing is okay occasionally, but if it is done over and over and over, it takes away from a word's impact and the word gets very, very boring. However, these shows all appear on American cable networks, outside the influence of the FCC, so their censorship is strictly voluntary.

In the United States, although the use of the word shit is still mostly considered inappropriate on non-cable network television, the FCC has allowed a handful of exceptions. The October 14, 1999 episode of Chicago Hope is believed to be the first show (excluding documentaries) on U.S. network television to contain the word shit in uncensored form. Another example of the word shit being allowed uncensored on network television is found on the ER episode "On the Beach". During this episode, Dr. Mark Greene, experiencing the final stages of a deadly brain tumor, shouts the word in anger after suddenly collapsing to the floor while attempting to get out of bed. Although the episode was originally aired uncensored, the audio has since been edited from syndicated reruns, silencing out the word.

In Canada, "shit" is often aired uncensored on TV. A good example is the Canadian sitcom Trailer Park Boys where words like shit, fuck, and even creative phrases like "shitbat" are used many times per episode.

In the song "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains, the line "Buried in my shit" was played unedited over most rock radio stations. Often such words in pop songs are blurred together and cannot be understood sufficiently to be recognized by fans, much less cause offense to censors. However, many large pop hits have nevertheless included the word. Pink Floyd's hit "Money," originally released in 1973, refers to "bullshit," a slightly less offensive form (which recently formed the title of one of the country's bestselling books). The song is played in edited form on the radio.

In Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner", many radio stations leave in the line "funky shit going down in the city". Likewise, the Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" has a line about having no idea "what kind of shit was about to go down". Both of these songs were released with a "radio edit" version (replacing the words "funky shit" in the Miller song with "funky kicks"); Although the original version is occasionally played by satellite radio and smaller community stations throughout the United States.

The 1980 hit album Hi Infidelity by American rock group REO Speedwagon contained a song called "Tough Guys", which had the line "she thinks they're full of shit". This was not a major hit from the album, though it did get radio play.

However, American terrestrial radio stations with any significant audience must abide by FCC guidelines on obscenity to avoid punitive fines, unlike satellite radio. These guidelines do not define exactly what constitutes obscenity, but it has certainly been interpreted by some commissioners as including any form of words like shit and fuck, for whatever use, rude or not. Thus the word shit is actually less likely to be heard today in music than a decade or two ago, although still quite common for movies. In the album version of her song "Hollaback Girl", Gwen Stefani repeatedly utters the phrase "This shit is bananas!", but the music video had the phrase instead playing as, "This shhh is bananas," where 'shit' was the only word deemed worthy of censorship. In Avril Lavigne's song "My Happy Ending", the Radio Disney edit of the song replaces "all the shit that you do" with "all the stuff that you do." Likewise, in the recent song "London Bridge" by the Black Eyed Peas member Fergie the phrase "Oh Shit" is repeatedly used as a background line. A radio edit of this song replaced "Oh Shit" with "Oh Snap". Terrestrial radio is also decreasingly popular for the type of music and talk programming where the word might be used, perhaps due to this climate of fear among station managers.

On December 3, 1994, Green Day performed "Geek Stink Breath", on Saturday Night Live, shit was not edited from tape delay live broadcast. The band did not appear on the show again until April 9, 2005.

References

Douglas Harper Ingenious Trifling. Online Etymology Dictionary. retrieved October 24, 2006.

External links

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