[Ads-l] Early newspaper sightings of "(bull)shit"

[Shapiro, Fred]

The c.1910 usage of "bullshit" by T. S. Eliot is known only from a single copy of the poem in question at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library (in the Ezra Pound Papers).  Someday I'd like to look at the poem at Beinecke.  

The other early possible-usages discussed by Ben and Bonnie and Jon and Doug are fascinating.  Probably there is some kind of tradition of typesetters and the like amusing themselves through off-color tinkering with texts.

Getting back to literary uses of "shit," I think Hemingway was also a big user of the word.

Fred Shapiro


________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Ben Zimmer [bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2015 11:25 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Early newspaper sightings of "(bull)shit"

My latest post for Strong Language, a new group blog on swearing and
taboo vocabulary, is on early appearances of "shit" and "bullshit"
slipped into American newspapers:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/when-shit-hits-the-newspapers/&k=dpQisR3avULHgiNaNeY%2Btg%3D%3D%0A&r=wZwFUjd8GPnYGI%2BVs7vDUPSolog9LUYFEowXF2Rz1AY%3D%0A&m=1TOy5vSbrbi2idoUV7SAKVtKG0Tww9bkDFsaZPdQme8%3D%0A&s=87c2c9f8057616744a3ea9d794d8c3e7443bcef7fb507b3b7851b9a22036d5d0

I include Bonnie Taylor-Blake's two excellent "bullshit" discoveries
and contribute a few of my own finds from the databases.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://benzimmer.com/&k=dpQisR3avULHgiNaNeY%2Btg%3D%3D%0A&r=wZwFUjd8GPnYGI%2BVs7vDUPSolog9LUYFEowXF2Rz1AY%3D%0A&m=1TOy5vSbrbi2idoUV7SAKVtKG0Tww9bkDFsaZPdQme8%3D%0A&s=170da281175a60a3d25187a74549c82b4c9f2dac2b73d878bb7e00104c35a5f4

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.americandialect.org/&k=dpQisR3avULHgiNaNeY%2Btg%3D%3D%0A&r=wZwFUjd8GPnYGI%2BVs7vDUPSolog9LUYFEowXF2Rz1AY%3D%0A&m=1TOy5vSbrbi2idoUV7SAKVtKG0Tww9bkDFsaZPdQme8%3D%0A&s=722862f9e4f86dbe533158dfda9eeaeaca1d4b257cc6b5821d0668464b1c2870

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org