[Ads-l] Valid First Use of "Shit Happens" ?

[Nancy Friedman]

I found a 1978 citation ("Tragic Magic," a novel by Wesley Brown) with
evidence of earlier usage:

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/shitlike-stuff-happens/

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022, 3:35 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> It has just dawned on me that I am responsible for a kind of etymological
> urban legend that is not accurate.  The Yale Book of Quotations indicated
> that Connie Eble printed "Shit happens" in her 1983 compilation of
> University of North Carolina slang, and this factoid has gained some
> notoriety in the media as the earliest known use of the proverb.  But
> Eble's wording was actually "That shit happens."  To me that is not the
> real proverb, as it refers to some specific shit as occurring with some
> frequency.  The true proverb is a general proposition about the prevalence
> of shit in the world, which the Eble citation is not.
>
> Can anyone help point me to the earliest discoverable general-proposition
> citation for "Shit happens" ?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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