Rap slang shiznit (great, cool)--Residual uncertainty

Gerald Cohen gcohen at UMR.EDU
Wed Feb 4 18:17:01 UTC 2004


  I think I can answer the question that I asked this morning.

>... But how does the concept "excrement" come to express "great,
>cool, fantastic"? What am I missing here?

   The answer is that the term for excrement was applied to drugs (See
John Bassett McCleary's _Hippie Dictionary_, Berkeley: Ten Speed
Press, 2002),
and the presence or arrival of drugs is what must have originally
been regarded as great/cool/fantastic.

Gerald Cohen



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