shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)

Garson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Sun Sep 5 03:13:09 UTC 2010


shit, int.
1. A coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust.
First cite in OED 1920 (Mentioned by George)

2. In trivial use.
First cite in OED 1937
1937 J. DOS PASSOS U.S.A. I. 73 Shit, let's try pick 'em up.

Here are two uses in 1909 of "shit" that might satisfy the "trivial
use" OED definition given above:

LAW REPORTER
Court of Quarter Seesions of Montgomery County
Commonwealth v Frank Chicarine.
No. III, October Term 1909.
Charge Murder

The Cop was walking out DeKalb St. beyond Brown. He was behind us
about 100 yards. Grim started to sing to put up a bluff I said "I give
it up" and Grim said "oh. shit, you got money. I must have money. I am
broke." I says at the cemetery "stop." We stopped then.
…
I says "this is the first job I done since I came out of Huntingdon
and it will be the last. Oh, shit, don't mind me. I have done tricks
before."

http://books.google.com/books?id=pUuTAAAAIAAJ&q=shit#v=snippet&


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.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list