[Ads-l] "You live in shit!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

New to me.

Poss. cf. "Happy as a pig in shit."

JL

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 9:45 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "You live in shit!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some years ago, I mentioned this bit of GI slang, of which there was no
> trace, at the time, except in my memory and in those of the few Army
> buddies with whom I'm still in contact, a half-century later. Now, there
> are 24,621 raw G-hits, Web and Books combined.
>
> And they are all appear to be used as expected: as insults.
>
> In the Army, the phrase meant,
>
> "Wow! You are really *lucky*!" "Everything is breaking your way!" "How in
> hell are *you* so fortunate?!" "I really *envy* you your good fortune!"
> Etc.
>
> It was a friendly expression of envy that something had gone right -
> seemingly out of nowhere - for someone else, as when the someone somehow
> forgot to put on his insignia before an inspection, only to have it happen
> that the inspection was carried out by a Navy officer, who didn't notice
> anything wrong with an Army uniform.
>
> As for the semantic development, fifty years of pondering it has given me
> no clue.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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