Up shit creek without a paddle

Meaning

In an awkward situation or unpleasant predicament.

Origin

This slang phrase, like most street slang, is difficult to date and determine the orgin of precisely. What we can say is that it, or at least the 'shit creek' part of it was known in the USA in the 1860s as it appeared in the transcript of the 1868 Annual report of the [US] Secretary of War, in a section that included reports from distrcits of South Carolina:

"Our men have put old [Abraham] Lincoln up shit creek."

In Lincoln's day, as now, 'shit creek' wasn't a real place, just a figurative way of describing somewhere unpleasant; somewhere on wouldn't want to be.

The 'without a paddle' ending is just an intensifier, added by later wags for additional effect. This dates from the middle of the 20th century. The American novellist John Dos Passos used the phrase in Adventures of a Young Man, 1939:

They left the store ready to cry from worry. It was dark; they had a hard time finding their way through the woods to the place where they'd left the canoe. The mosquitos ate the hides off them. 'Well, we're up shit creek without any paddle'.

See other phrases that were coined in the USA.