shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Sat Sep 4 17:25:58 UTC 2010


The OED has this from 1920 (Joyce's Ulysses).

An article in the journal Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game has an article by John Thorn, "Origins of the New York Game" (vol. 3, #2, Fall, 2009).  He discusses certain of the rules laid down by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in the mid 19th C.

"[Rule] 17.  All disputes and differences relative to the game, to be decided by the Umpire, from which there is no appeal."  Thorn remarks "A rule observed largely in the breach, ever since umpire Eugene Plunkett fined Ebenezer R. Dupignac six cents "for saying s--t.""
Footnote 33 cites the Game Books of the Knickerbocker Club, now in the New York Public Library, and gives the date April 26, 1849.

The passage quoted appears on page 116; footnote 33 on p. 124.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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