[Ads-l] bullshit

[Jonathan Lighter]

New to me, from Quora.com:

[T]he English term bullshit [may have] had its origin in... western
America, as a Mondegreen or Eggcorn misunderstanding and adoption of
Chinese laborers’ rejection of a statement or assertion as contrary to
fact. It’s a very small leap from a very basic and frequently-used
exclamatory Chinese term 不是 (Bùshì = is not, not so, not possible, not
necessary, not right, etc.) to an unlettered Westerner’s
misinterpretation of it as bullshit!"

I doubt it. For one thing those laborers overwhelmingly spoke dialects
of Cantonese rather than Mandarin.

JL

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

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