Unemployment lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, when I waas in the Arny fifty years ago, any trashcan that
wasn't used for the disposal of left-over food - a "garbage can" - was
called a "shitcan." Throwing something away was referred to as
"shitcanning" it.

I've always felt that "can" in the sense of "fire" - I got *canned* -
was a clip of "shitcan," unless it was based on the old, sadistic,
children's game of tying a can to a dog's tail, still not unheard of
as recently as the war years, i.e., during WWII, for you younger folk.

But these derivations are no more than WAG's on my part.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
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> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Unemployment lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)
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> Don't the Brits say "made redundant"?
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>> Behalf Of Mark Peters
>> Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 1:41 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Unemployment lingo
>>
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Mark Peters <markpeters33 at YAHOO.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Unemployment lingo
>>
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>> --------
>>
>> I'm doing a column on the many words and phrases for firing people:
> let
>> go, downsize, rightsize, shitcan, sack, discard, terminate, pink slip,
>> show
>> the door, etc.
>>
>> There are two things I'd like to sip (siphon?) from the collective
> pool
>> of
>> wisdom:
>>
>> 1) What other words fit in this category? I have some recent ones like
>> getting
>> fit and synergy-related headcount reductions, but there must be
>> more.
>>
>> 2) Any info on the history of shitcan? The OED doesn't have it, and
>> HDAS
>> doesn't go that far...
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Mark
>>
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