shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Oh, shitte!" appears (in fancifully Elizabethan spelling) in Mark Twain's
"1601" (written ca1880).

I'm too lazy to check, but I believe that's the earliest unequivocal ex. in
my files.

Garson's suggestion is very reasonable.  Possibly more reasonable, because
it would have been a direct challenge to the umpire.

Regarding a less frequent excremental idiom:

*1799  *Old Bailey Proceedings*  [
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=179909110059]:  Now, you
sh----n son of a b-----, where is your ten pound duck now?  1938 Ezra Pound
in Brita Lindberg-Seyersted, ed., *Pound/Ford: The Story of a Literary
Friendship * (N.Y.: New Directions, 1982) 159: It is a shitten outrage that
Johnnie Adams’ letters are out of print.

In modern times, this is spelled "shittin'."

JL


On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, Sep 04, 2010 at 09:22:45PM -0400, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > At 9/4/2010 06:29 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >> Wow!
> >
> > Undsoubtedly shit, but does a "s--t" qualify for the OED and the HDAS?
>
> Yes.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
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