Unemployment lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Bill Palmer]

Could be that "shitcan" is common to all of the military services.  In the
Navy it is in widespread use as a noun and a verb, with the same usages
described in earlier postings.

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: Unemployment lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Unemployment lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In the military of my day, the term was totally neutral, whether noun
> or verb. I had never heard "shitcan" till I joined the Army and I've
> never heard "shitcan" used outside of the Army, well, randomly, from
> other ex-GI's. OTOH, in the Army, I never heard "shitcan" clipped to
> "can."
>
> -Wilson
> â?"â?"â?"
> 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 12:56 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Unemployment lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> FWIW, I think of "can" (meaning "fire [smn]") as derived purely from
>> "trash can"/"garbage can", as in "Can it!" = "Shut up!", and when I
>> first heard "shitcan" v. I took it as an angry intensive form. Does
>> Cassell's give a reason for their etymology?
>>
>> Mark Mandel
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
>> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> Cassell's supposes this sense of "can" (v.) is derived from "toss out on
>>> one's
>>> can," and "shitcan" (v.) is an intensified form thereof.
>>>
>>>
>>> --Ben Zimmer
>>
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