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

[Shapiro, Fred]

Great discovery, John !

Fred Shapiro


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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Baker, John <JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM>
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2022 7:06 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Valid First Use of "Shit Happens" ?

Daily Texan (Austin, Tex.), Dec. 9, 1982, at 5 (via NewspaperArchive):  "But it doesn't matter.  Time flies.  Things change.  Shit happens."

As I've posted before, I believe, the phrase was popularized by, and may have originated as, a bumper sticker that was popular with recovering alcoholics and addicts.  Unfortunately, bumper stickers are hard to date, but I don't think I saw any as early as 1982.  The bumper sticker sometimes resulted in fines, so that slowed its initial spread.


John Baker



From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Jesse Sheidlower
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2022 4:09 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Valid First Use of "Shit Happens" ?

External Email - Think Before You Click


Fred probably knows about this, being a co-author of the book you cite....

The "stuff happens" examples (1944 and 1969) also cited there feel pretty strong to me. The Brown novel is different; it's a more general use ("once you know the reason why shit happens..."), not a universal expression of resignation. I've seen a number of other 1970s examples in this general use.

Green's Dictionary of Slang cites the 1990 "complete and uncut" edition of Stephen King's _The Stand_, and dates it to 1978; I think this is probably inaccurate: while this edition did restore a large amount of unused manuscript material that was cut from the original edition, it also included "new material that King added as he reworded the manuscript for a new generation", so I would not consider this reliable evidence for a 1978 use.

Here's a rock-solid 1983 example--same year as the Eble, but the right phrasing. This is from a Northern California sailing magazine, where it's presented multiple times as an example of a "cruising maxim":

1983 _38 North_ (Jan.) 139: _Shit happens_ The ocean-going equivalent of "That's life"...Our dinghy was stolen. "Shit happens." Your best crewmember runs off with your wife. "Shit happens."

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Jesse Sheidlower

On Thu, Oct 06, 2022 at 03:51:37PM -0400, Nancy Friedman wrote:
> I found a 1978 citation ("Tragic Magic," a novel by Wesley Brown) with
> evidence of earlier usage:
>
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstronglang.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F08%2F18%2Fshitlike-stuff-happens%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7Cc13148bd17f94c1fa46008daa7ef7ec1%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638006944314929783%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=XPj7xJd1dMbVu9iXTGI9%2FPiBmmZXCH2hw%2B%2BNswly36w%3D&reserved=0<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstronglang.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F08%2F18%2Fshitlike-stuff-happens&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7Cc13148bd17f94c1fa46008daa7ef7ec1%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638006944314929783%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Z%2F9GoMY31RxnvM9qw1DTVwj%2BHCpcgr1suHKMoHtlmPw%3D&reserved=0>
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2022, 3:35 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu<mailto: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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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