shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:29 PM -0400 9/4/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Wow!
>
>Of course, only a lexicographer would say that. All others would
>yawn. Didn't the Venerable Bede say that in informal moments?

It might depend to whom he said it.  There still seems to be an
unwritten (unless it's written) rule that you're thrown out of a
baseball game for saying things *to* umpires that would pass without
a raised eyebrow if it was clear you were saying them to yourself, a
teammate, a manager, or even members of the opposition.  Maybe it was
just easier to have a blanket rule stipulating a 6 cent fine for
saying "shit" that could be ignored (or honored in breach) when the
shit was clearly not intended to land on the ump.

LH

>
>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:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  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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>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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