shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Wow!

Of course, only a lexicographer would say that. All others would
yawn. Didn't the Venerable Bede say that in informal moments?

They certainly say similar things in _Beowulf and Grendel_ (2005).
Concerning Grendel, Hrothgar laments, "He's a fucking troll! How do I know
why a fucking troll does what a fucking troll does?"

JL

On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 1:25 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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