When someone is “shit”… That’s bad
When someone “ain’t shit”… That’s also bad
When someone is “the shit”… That’s good!
???
Please help
First you have an association of anything bad with excrements. This is cross-linguistically fairly common, and really old*.
From that “shit = bad” meaning, you got semantic amelioration generating the “the shit = the best”. English slang does this fairly often; refer to “sick”, “dope”, “wicked” doing the same. I’m not sure but I think that the underlying process is:
- “shit” as “extremely bad” →
- “shit” as “notably, outstandingly bad” →
- “shit” as “notable, outstanding” →
- “shit” as “noteworthy, good”
That also explains why “it ain’t shit” is generally negative - it conveys “it isn’t noteworthy”.
*It’s so old that one of Martial’s Epigrams (liber III, epigram 17), in 1st century Latin, already shows this:
Circumlata diu mensis scribilita secundis urebat nimio saeva calore manus; sed magis ardebat Sabidi gula: protinus ergo sufflavit buccis terque quaterque suis. illa quidem tepuit digitosque admittere visa est, sed nemo potuit tangere: merda fuit.
A tart [scribilita], passed and passed around at dessert, cruelly burnt our hands with its excessive heat. But Sabidius’ greed was more fiery still; so forthwith he blew on it with his cheeks three or four times. The tart cooled to be sure, and seemed ready to admit our fingers, but nobody could touch it. It was filth.
I’m copypasting the translation out of laziness, but… it is not accurate. “Merda” is not just filth, it’s literally “shit” - and it’s metaphoric as you’d use in English “that cheesecake was shit”, same shit here.
Fucking well done comment, sir. Thank you
That comment is the shit!
Huh, I always thought “ain’t shit” comes from “this is so bad, it ain’t even shit”. Was probably just my personal take to explain it.
This won’t help, but it’s fun: https://youtu.be/igh9iO5BxBo?si=oyLAwhvrhsR4FHSZ
Saw the question and thought of exactly this video. Great skit.
Beat me to it. Perfect for this post.
Bad words just become extreme. The modify the emotion. They often don’t mean anything literally. You have to look for other clues or just memorize the terms.
Words don’t all have meaning in isolation. :) The examples you give just have meaning based on the combination of words.
A bit like letters. We don’t think “r” is contradictory because in “fart” it describes something foul and it “tart” it describes somerthing tasty.
Shieeet: amazed, wow
Nice shit: good stuff
No shit: obvious
Holy shit: surprise
It’s a swiss army knife of english word. Actually it’s rather similar with mandarin, a single word alone mean something, adding different word front or behind will change its meaning.
For example, 害(haì) can mean something bad or harmful or causation, 害怕(haì pà) mean scared or fearful, while 厉害(lì haì) mean something awesome or incredible, and 受害者(shòu haì zhě) mean victim
When it comes to the mess that history has made of English, Susie Dent should be sought for guidance.
The difference between shit and shite
Kevin Bridges
And don’t forget the division. A piece of shit, is bad, like a car that won’t start, or a selfish person. A big piece of shit or a huge piece of shit is worse, but it’s never a whole shit, because then it would be The shit, and good.
“shit” expresses excitement. And just like excitement, that can be good or bad.
How about horseshit, apeshit, batshit, dogshit, and probably lots more. Each of these has a pretty specific use case
Not to mention bullshit.
