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All about sh*t

Posted by ESC on November 30, 2002

In Reply to: All about sh*t posted by ESC on November 30, 2002

: : : : : : I am doing an English assignment on ****, I have heard a history of it meaning: Ship High In Transit. Does anyone know of any other meaning? Please get back to me soon as my project is due on Monday Dec.2, 2002. Thank you!!!!

: : : : : There are folk derivations of various swearwords in the form of acronyms. For example, 'for unlawful carnal knowledge'. These are nonesense. Swearwords are just words like any others. For some reason, probably to do with coyness, some people prefer to invent spurious origins for them.

: : : : : According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word comes from the Old English:

: : : : : scite - dung and/or scitte - diarrhoa.

: : : : I wonder if there's any connection to the Greek skatos, also meaning dung?

: : : My OED traces it only as far back as Old Norse and Middle Low German. The American Heritage Dictionary, however, refers it to the Proto-Indo-European root "skei-," to cut, split, whose descendants include "science" and "conscious" (L. "scire," to know, from "to separate one thing from another," "discern") and "schedule" and "schizo-" (Gr. "skhizein," to split).

: : It's "Scheiße" in German - very similar indeed.

**** - "From the Indo-European root 'skei,' 'to divide,' comes the Old English 'scitan,' 'to defecate,' that is the ancestor of our word '****.' 'To ****' thus means strictly to divide or cut (wastes) from the body." Page 609. Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).

".the Old English 'scitan,' to defecate, befoul, was spelled '****e' by the 14th century and '****' by the 16th century. Until the late 19th century, however, written uses are so few that we don't know what expressions '****' was used in." Page 314. I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976).

"'****,' as slang for nonsense or lies, is an Americanism probably first used by soldiers during the Civil War as a shortening of 'bull****,' another Americanism that probably goes back 30 years or more earlier, though it is first recorded, in the form of its euphemism 'bull,' in about 1850." Page 609. Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).

"Then in the 1870s, such terms as 'to fall in the ****' (to get in trouble) and the exclamation '**** and corruption!' were recorded. Also in wide use between the 1870s and the 1890s were such seemingly modern terms as '****' and 'bull****' meaning 'nonsense, rubbish, lies' (chicken ****' and 'horse****' were recorded in the 1930s); 'the ****s,'' diarrhea' '**** pot' and '**** face,' both referring to a contemptible person (followed by '**** head' around 1915); 'to **** on someone,' to treat someone badly; and 'to beat the **** out of' someone. By 1910 '**** or bust,' to do or die, was common and so was '**** or get off the pot,' a vulgar rephrasing of the old New England 'fish or cut bait,' meaning to do something or let someone else try, do something or give up. By 1918 S.O.L. was a common abbreviation for the older '**** out of luck.' In World War I the old rural term '****house'.became a popular soldier's term for latrine.World War II introduced such expressions as '**** list,' a black list, a mental list of disliked people; '**** on a shingle,' creamed chipped beef on toast; and saw the increasing popularity of all obscenity and scatology, including '**** heel' for a contemptible person." Page 314-315. I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976).

"There was such a fantastic increase in the use of 'f**k,' 'screw' and '****' during World War II that it almost seemed no serviceman could complete a sentence without using one of them. This armed forces use and acceptance of these words spread to many segments of the population during and after the war, helped by veterans bringing their vocabulary to college campuses, a wartime and postwar lessening of social restrictions, increasing social mobility, new concepts of free speech, the 'sexual revolution' of the 1950s and 60s, and the Women's Liberation movement since the late 1960s." Page 158. I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976).

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