[Ads-l] "Looking to showcase women who do shit!"

[Laurence Horn]

For me it correlates with intonation: 
 
"They use/don't use old people to DO shit" = 'to do stuff'
"They use/don't use old people to do SHIT" = 'to do nothing/zilch/squat/bupkis'.  

YMMV.

LH

> On Feb 11, 2016, at 4:32 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> To do stuff? To get things done?
> 
> In other words, do means do, not doodoo.
> 
> DanG
> 
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 1:24 AM, 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:      "Looking to showcase women who do shit!"
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> "How many 72-year-old people did you see today, just doing shit? Old people
>> don=E2=80=99t even use old people to do shit!"
>> 
>> Hi, everybody
>> Can you please tell me what "to do shit" means in American English?
>> My interpretation is "cazzeggiare," "fare cazzate."
>> 
>> 
>> The questioner is Italian. Clearly, his command of (written) English is
>> super...alidocious. Yet, he's confused by a totally-transparent idiom.
>> 
>> Youneverknow.
>> 
>> --=20
>> -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
>> 
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> 
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