more shit

Fri Sep 23 14:36:52 UTC 2011

The HDAS files have enough on this word to make a book.

I've heard of "shit-scared," but never "shit-happy."

My high-school Latin teacher told me in the early '60s that his impression
in 1942 had been that "shit on a shingle" went back to WW1.

Whippersnappers may need to be reminded that before the 1930s, publishing
the word "shit" was virtually impossible. Even in the '50s, James Jones had
to remove many of them from the manuscript of _From Here to Eternity_.

A reading of Freud, however (as well as my own high-school experiences),
suggests that it has always been a surprisingly popular topic of
non-literary conversation.

JL

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      more shit
>
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>
> Give a shit/not give a shit in the OED (in Phrases 3., under shit n.) does
> not have a single example of a question, as in "Do[n't] you give a shit?"
> or
> "Who gives a shit?" (same for "fuck").
>
> Also, the variant "not give two shits" is not mentioned. I am wondering if
> this is more recent or just went unnoticed for a long time.
>
> "(When) the shit hits the fan" is correctly interpreted as "(when) a
> situation suddenly becomes critical; (when) trouble suddenly or rapidly
> breaks out", but there is a third sense variant--"(when) trouble finally
> catches up, (when) [whatever troublesome activity one is involved in] is
> finally discovered"--i.e., the shit hits the fan as a consequence of some
> disreputable action. Another meaning--possibly subsumed in the second--is
> "(when there is) a power struggle".
>
> P25. "Shit happens" has lost it's purely negative connotation over time
> (did
> it have it to begin with?). It need not be a "resigned attitude", but
> merely
> the equivalent of "you never know what might happen"--positive or negative.
>
> Nothing for "shit-happy" or "holy shit!". The former might be relatively
> recent, but it does pop up: there is a Facebook page "That guy who looks
> shit happy in Rebecca Black's 'Friday'." It's hard to tell sometimes if
> "shit" is just a modifier on "happy" or if "shit-happy" is a single
> expression--to be honest, I could not describe what it means if I tried.
>
> As for "holy shit!", it's one of many "Holy X!", but one of the more common
> ones (contrast with Simpsonesque "Holy cow!"). Other "Holy X!"
> interjections
> are explicitly mentioned under holy 4.c.(c):
>
> (c) used with a following word as an oath or expletive, as holy cow! int.,
> > holy Moses! int., holy smoke! int., holy mackerel! int.
>
>
> "Holy mother of god!" is not mentioned as an interjection either--mother of
> god||shit. Never thought I'd write that... No alliterative "Holy Xs!" are
> mentioned either.
>
> There is an entry for "shit" applying to people:
>
> 2. An offensive or despicable person (usually a man); a person (usually a
> man) whose behaviour is regarded as obnoxious.
>
> But there is no separate subentry for children, who are the usual target of
> this description (e.g., "little shits", "shits running around the house",
> etc.--plain "little shit" appears in three quotations under the same lemma)
>
> http://goo.gl/oNRoV
> Scottish proverbs, collected and arranged by A. Henderson. 1832
> >
> > Shit. A contemptuous designation for a child.
>
>
> Going back to shitting bricks, another volume of Scottish proverbs gives a
> good one:
>
> http://goo.gl/VziOX
> A complete collection of Scottish proverbs. By James Kelly. 1818
> >
> > 209. That's hard, quoth the old wife, when she shit a mill-stone.
> > A senseless bauble when we think our fortune is bad
>
>
>  "Worth a shit" is a common designation, particularly with negation (not
> worth a shit)--no mention, although other similar phrases and meanings of
> shit are listed. "Not worth a dime/nickel" is not listed either, but there
> are other "not worth a X" that /are/ listed:
> continental, cress, curse, damn, flaw, louse, mite, penny, picayune, pin,
> plack, pudding, purchase, whistle
>
> Only some of these have the same meaning (the obvious ones are "damn" and
> "penny"). Thought, mention, memory are not listed either in this context.
> But quotations include
> black dog (coin), bender, band's end, thought, nail, brass button, cardecu
> (coin), custock (castock==cabbage), "glass of cold without", cute (cuit,
> coot), carlicue (curlicue--curlyQ), doit (doitkin, dodkin), dog turd, figge
> (fig, dry fig), fillip, flick, fuck, fonk (funk), gooseberry, minute's
> care,
> grig, grote (groat), farthing, tinker's cuss (tinker's curse--under "not
> care a tinker's curse"), hoot, straw, leky's blade (leke, leek), couple of
> nut shalis (nutshale, nutshell), Portsmouth passage boat (??), pear, pease,
> pease-cod, pfenning, potato, bean, skerrick, skillagalee (skilligalee),
> sneeshing, song, sou markee, sponk (spunk), thost, tord (turd).
>
> VS-)
>
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