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

[Shapiro, Fred]

In the past I have checked the alleged 1978 Stephen King usage and it was erroneous.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2022 4:08 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Valid First Use of "Shit Happens" ?

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."

https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Flatitude3867jaunse%2Fpage%2F138%2Fmode%2F2up&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C38665fa0f07e477e24a808daa7d68dd9%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638006837202918542%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=a1Z2KCt%2BYcj14hqf4DqTOfGaf7tzqfPZ%2FcxRu2oMtZA%3D&reserved=0

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%7C38665fa0f07e477e24a808daa7d68dd9%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638006837202918542%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=EeOPJiruPhmHGfKeG%2BWPQJQRDfm4%2BQ2avssj4NbKNdY%3D&reserved=0
>
> 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
> >



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